Full text of "The Awakening Of India"

See other formats

THE, AWAKENING

OF INDIA

J. RAMSAY MACDONALD

POPULAR EDITION

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

CONTENTS

PART I

A FOREWORD

I. Apologia pro Lxbro Meo
II On the Way . . .

PART II
IMPRESSIONS

I In Baroda

II. Among the Rajputs .

Ill At Simla

IV. The Khybee and the Path an

" V. At Lahore . . ... .

VI. Punjab Camps . ' ,

VII. At Benares .

VIII. The Genius of Bengal

IX. The Women of India .

X. ' The Women of India — continued

CONTENTS

PART III
OPINIONS

India .

. 66

II.

The Ways of the “Native”

. 70

III.

The New India of Commerce

. 81

IV.

The Land of the Poverty -ste ick en .

. 91

Awakening India

ii5

VI.

Great Britain in India . .

. 133

VII.

What is to be the End ?

, 167

VIII.

Last Thoughts

. 188

PART I

i ’ A FOREWORD

APOLOGIA PRO LIBRO MEO

■ I may be expected to apologise for this book. I paid but
a brief visit to India, and was called back by a General
Election before I had completed my plans. Some of my
opinions might therefore be revised on a more intimate ac-
quaintance with the land, its people, and its government.
| I began to write for two purposes. In the first place,
I promised to contribute to The Daily Chronicle (which
' I have to thank for many kindnesses, not the least of
which is the liberty to use the matter I contributed to

( it) a few articles on impressions I formed on the spot;
and in the second place, I began on my way home,
whilst my experiences were still fresh in my memory, to
I put down on paper the opinions I had formed with a
. view to testing how far I could explain and support them.

; This test — originally meant to be a purely private exer-
| cise — and those articles are the basis of this book.

F When I reached Bombay on my way back I was
taken to task by an Anglo-Indian newspaper for having
l expressed opinions with which it did not agree. It
i; wisely did not discuss the opinions ; it merely said I
I had no business 'to bold them. Its state of mind is
i typical— I regret to have to believe it — of the majority

j of Anglo-Indians. They assume that no one can under-

| stand them and their problems unless his eyes have

; been blinded by the Indian sun and his i^ind moulded
| by Anglo-Indian habits for a generation.' Their reply
f to criticisms is not reasons, but the recital of dogmas

10 APOLOGIA PRO LIBRO MEO

which cannot be explained to the perspiring stranger,
they believe, because the truth embodied in them cannot
be grasped by him. It belongs to a world in which he
is a child. To such persons this book will be but further
evidence of the wickedness of the world, the impertinence
of men, and the bitterness of the cup to be drained by
Anglo-Indians.

But in India, as elsewhere, one very soon discovers
that there is not one “man on the spot,” but two.
That section of Anglo-India represented by the best-
known newspapers is only a majority. There is along-
side it a minority which knows India, I think, more
intimately, and has retained under Eastern conditions
the best of our Western ethics more successfully.
There is also the Indian himself, who must still count
for something in Indian government ; and I venture to
hope that these sections may find in the following
pages something to justify my publishing them.

When I had finished my test of self-examination,
I found myself in a camp almost by myself, the reason
being, I think, that I went out with the ideas of modern
collectivism in my mind. Whilst these made me wel-
come the more political side of Indian nationalism,
they forbade my sympathising with some of its economic
demands, such as Protection and the Permanent Settle-
ment found in Bengal. I thus at one moment take my
place with one bedfellow and at the next am with another.
a After conversations with men of importance in many
different walks of life in India, I often pondered over
the difficulty of getting a mental grasp d^what India is.
The thing eluded me. It was like attempting to pick
up mercury between the fingers ; and I certainly make
no pretensions to have gripped it yet. But this con-
clusion is, I think, sound. A person can go to India
for a short time, a flying visit, and if he has carefully
prepared himself before by becoming acquainted with
Indians here .and by reading authoritative statements
made by men in the various camps of Indian life and
activity ; if he uses his time judiciously, sees the right

APOLOGIA PRO LIBRO MEO

people, and turns conversation into the most profitable
channels ; if he has the spiritual faculty of sympathy
with men of other race than his own, he may get a far
better general view than those who have lived long in
the land. He will not have a very accurate and de-
tailed knowledge of the trees; he will have a truly
valuable conception of the forest. In fact, the trees and
the forest are rarely seen by one mind. The one ob-
scures the other. Thus it comes about that a shrewd
| observer, who will make numerous mistakes in describing
■' details, will understand the general tendency of the
| sum total of Indian life more accurately 7 than one who

f has lived so long in the country that he has ceased to

( see it except as a moving mass of detail.

The fresh eye is an important element in investi-
gation and criticism ; and this is truer in India than in
any land upon which I have set foot. In India, habit
counts for far more than it does here. The country* is
governed by a bureaucracy which, though officers may
come and officers may go, goes on for ever, without a
break beyond the fluctuations in policy natural to its
own being. No General Election changes its majority,
no new Premier comes to alter its course, no Pariia-
mentary complication modifies its will. It runs in ruts.
It has no machinery 7 for self-criticism.

I have tried to be just both in my appreciations and
my depreciations. Not a sentence has been written
without a recollection of the many proofs I had that
; there is generosity, fair-mindedness, and a desire to do
I right in all classes and all races in India, If any one
| reading these pages detects in them an unhappy sug-
gestion that all is not well in India, that unsettlement is
I getting worse, that we have not yet found the way of
f peace, that the West might be more hesitating in assert-
ing the superiority of its materialist civilisation, I confess
: he will only have detected what is actually my feeling.

Beyond this I have only to say that the book is jusL.
= what it says it is— the impressions of one who whilst
m India tried to steep his mind in that of India.

ON THE WAY

The East comes far to meet the traveller from the West.
He threads his way through the fleets of commerce
which speed through the English Channel hastening to
fulfil the desires of a people which seek the gains which
the moth and rust corrupt and the rival steals away ;
he enters the Bay and is tossed and buffeted by the
waves of the rude West which roll shorewards in egotis-
tical pride like an unconquered army buoyant with a
lust for new conquests ; he skirts the coasts of Portugal
upon swelling seas that heave like the breast of a strong
man, passing slowly from the stage of mighty effort to
that of peaceful slumber. The spell of the East has
come thus far. Next morning Tangier gleams beneath
the tawny mountains of Africa ; the light glistens on a
sleepy sea ; the hills are parched unto death by the
hot embrace of the ardent sun ; Gibraltar rises bare and
blistering in front of him. When he lands the hot air
streams up from the dusty ground and dries the moisture
in his eyes. The army of occupation is not merely
foreign, it belongs to another world — it is like a stray
plant carried far from its natural home struggling to
master uncongenial air, unsuitable soil, and deadly sur-
roundings, and, by changing its root and stem and
leaves^ to adapt itself to its new conditions,
i ; heat increases ; more passive becomes the sea ;
the mountains rise up bare, broken, jagged, screened
by hot, shimmering air, cooled by no kindly plant,
rounded by no gentle rain ; and the traveller feels that
he himself is changing v He seems to be gliding as

ON THE WAY

though in sleep into a land of dreamy laziness, into
peace, into the void.

Most weary seemed tlie sea, weary the oar,

Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.

In a word, the spell of the East is taking hold of him,

him

Marseilles the boisterous West pours upon
like a douche from a spout, blows upon him like the
mistral. The special train arrives. There is a general
bustle, a hurrying and a scurrying, and from the mass
emerges the particular. It is bouncing and talkative
and overdressed. It holds up its skirts and reveals
buckled shoes, daintily stockinged ankles, and billows
of white lace. Or it may be of the other gender, and
then it is proudly official, drilled into hauteur, groomed
and cut in military fashion. Its cheeks are smooth and
glossy, its hair has been patiently attended to, its head
is poised with pride. Male or female, it is imperial
and imperious, ' It is a ruling class. It is' the West
agitating the spirit slipping away into the dreamland
of the East. It is like the hand of the wakeful shaking
the shoulder of the sleeper. It is a jar, an annoyance.
They say that when one is nearly drowned one wanders
amidst pleasant pastures and on happy paths and that
then the return to life is through horror-haunted ways
beset by pain. Thus does the arrival at Marseilles of
the superior ones on their way to India disturb one
who has seen Tangier and Gibraltar in the sun, and who
has come so far upon a smooth Mediterranean sea.

But the chatter dies, the bustle becomes languid,
and as the days go the East creeps back steadily into
the soul. We walk in the cool morning miles and miles ,
round and round the deck ; we return in the evening
to the same violent exercise. But the spell has hold of
us. At night the moon throw's on the water its silvery
highway out into the infinite ; the stars in the deep
transparent space of the heavens are beacon lights
which seem to shine as points in the eternal vastness —
little points which are footholds for the imagination

14 ON THE WAY

journeying through the illimitable; and during the
day the cruel glitter of the sun, the subdued energy of
the sea, the stifling heat of the air, combine to oppress
us into a subjection of being, and an acquiescence in the
decrees of the powers that created us and of which we

fll i i P a n t UngS ' F e reeline on deck reading novels ;
the little sillinesses of social life become the occupation

of Se Si a qU T? ° f trag fy holds comt on one part
° ne 0i bappzer dl & mit y and equally alluring
lobes holds court on another part ; young things who

skiffs Jd hie be^n to
row down life together, sit side by side communing bv
glances, leaving each other only to fetch a chocolat/boj

suck * weet offering ; old things who have
glided through those green glories of the river of Time
and have come to the more sober banks where the
stream gets broader and the sound of the surf of the
ocean where all things end is beginning to be heart
ind energy for a rubber of whist under the deck awn'

mg; but upon all falls the languor of the tronies nnrn
all comes the sn,V,>. nf i&JZ Wopz . cs ’ upozz

ON THE WAY

even the winds of night come as from the month of the
pit. The unrefreshed body tosses in its sleep. It is
haunted by nightmares ; the ship is a prison ; the
Furies are the jailers. One struggles with something,
something that is unseen, that is everywhere, that is
terrible. The days are long ; the nights are longer.
Thus one goes down the Red Sea past the Arabian
coast, catching glimpses of its barrenness, until Aden,
a parched cinder, marks the limits of greatest torture.
The spell has been accomplished. The grip of the East
is upon the traveller. The sea, soothed into a glassy
indifference, swells and heaves around him, and, having
undergone the discipline, he awakes one morning to
find clouds upon green hills, boats with vast sails and
of old-world shapes gliding upon the waters, a white,
ghostly town between the clouds and the sea. It is
Bombay.

And yet the spell is not complete. The magic, like
so many things of the East, is losing its virtue. Sitting
in the shade of the hotel, the meaning of the ship
which he has just left appears before the wanderer like
a pageant seen between sleep and wakefulness. I have
written that the languor of the East falls upon all. It
does, and yet it does not. The men sitting in long deck
chairs, dozing over the silliest of novels, sometimes pull
themselves together, and the will of the West grapples
with the acquiescence of the East. They appear on the
morning of landing in their helmets. The novels, the
flirtations, the listlessness are of the past. They are
energetic, they are again imperial and imperious they
a, re of the governing caste, the masters of men. The
change is miraculous. They are lords returning home.
North, and South, and East they go to their districts
and their regiments, to govern and overawe, to rule and
be vigilant. In the crowd they are like magnet centres
from which forces emanate and to which forces are
drawn. To what end is this peculiar state of things
tending ? What system is it working out ? What de-

ON THE WAY

sigxi is it completing ? These questions will demand
an answer more insistently and peremptorily than they
have hitherto done ; but what the answer is to be i n
the end only a vain man will dogmatise about. Its
broken syllables, like a few parts of a shattered record
tablet, may be read in the work of these ruling wills as
seen in India to-day ; and it is my hope that isywhat
I write I may be able to put some of those s^H^s

PART II

IMPRESSIONS

! . . !
i • ; IN BAEODA

I reached Baroda before the sun had risen, and in
the dim light of the railway station received, in most
excellent English, the greetings of some officials. The
w r aning moon lay on the black sky like a chaste piece
of fine jewellery. Fires glimmered amidst trees; a
little tram stood a short way off lit with oil lamps ;
a chattering of men hidden in the shadows, and an un-
happy and broken call of birds met us as we emerged
into the darkness. Thus I came to the capital of the
most modem and enlightened of the Indian rulers.
The early morning and the thoughts it brought into
being were peculiarly befitting the circumstances.

It is easy to criticise Baroda : I have heard a good
deal of that since I reached India. But Baroda can
stand criticism. It is incomplete,* it is inconsistent in
detail, it is unfinished, it lapses into barbaric absurdities
— as Gothic architecture does.

There are astrologers at its Court. It is solemnly
recorded in official publications that when the late
Prince — a victim of Eton and Oxford culture — was
about to be married, the festivities were fixed by the
Court soothsayers. To bring this event off a Com-
mittee was appointed to assist the Prince, and a volume
was published containing an inventory of eligible young
ladies — I am not sure, however, but that is only an
adaptation of Western w r ays which the Maharajah may
have observed during one of his own visits to us. When
the new palace was complete the Annual Report of the
State informs us (1907-8) that amongst “the most
notable events of the year ” was “ the removal of the
State throne and gods . , . with due pomp and neces-

18 IN BARODA

sary religious ceremony.” In the city itself no trace of
the West is to be found, unless it be the tramway. The
open booths, the all but, nude men, women, and children
squatting amongst the merchandise, the crowds, the
noise, bear no traces of the British Raj. We might as
well never have fought Plassey or quelled the Mutiny,
But in the densest corner of the city we were dragged
up a steep flight of stairs, and on the first floor we dis-
covered some twenty little mites in quaint draperies
and with sad, wise faces writing cabalistic characters
on slates. It was a compulsory school, one of the 1200
which are now to be found all over the State, established
since 1903, when the Maharajah decided to decree that
elementary education was thenceforth to be free and
compulsory. Puffing up after us came the schoolmaster
in the limited garb of a Turkish bath attendant. The
worthy man had been down gossiping in the bazaar
and had rushed up to show the sahib and the memsahib
what wonderful things his pupils could do.

Not far off was a technical school housed in part in
the old palace where the Gaekwars used to be married.
There we saw pupils do pattern-making, engineering,
carpentry, weaving, dyeing. Near at hand were chemi-
cal laboratories and art studios. Elsewhere girls were
being taught the same lessons as boys, and were, in
addition, being initiated into such domestic arts as
cooking and sewing. Above all was the college and its
adjunct the museum, European in everything except in
the insufferable heat of its atmosphere. British art,

’ British philosophy, British text-books ! The tempera-
ture, the glimpses of palms through the windows, the
bullock carts passing along the road in front, the grace-
ful figures with bowls and jars on their heads — had it not
, been for these we should have thought we were at home.
We visited other institutions, from the jail to the
doss-house, from the menagerie to the public well, and
; everywhere the testimony^was the same. In Baroda
the will of man is struggling with his inheritance and
with nature in the spirit of what we call “ Progress.”

IN BARODA 19

Heads of departments eome and talk and bring their
Blue Books as offerings to the Western inquirer. In
the jails they have adopted the Borstal system ; they
have just founded a new State Bank ; they have ap-
pointed an economic expert to advise as to the indus-
tries -which eian best be carried on within their boun-
daries. He has begun chrome tanning and is hunting
for paying minerals. The monopoly of ports like
Bombay and Kurachee is being challenged, and other
harbours in Baroda territory are being surveyed. They
have solved the problem of religious instruction. Mo-
hammedan and Hindu are no longer like our church
and chapel, but are wolf and lamb lying down together.
They have less trouble with their tongues of Marathi,
Guzerati, Urdu than the University of Ireland has with
Celtic. “ But we have not yet solved the problem of
moral instruction,” one of the officials said to me ;
“ we are still looking for suitable text-books ! ”

In polities they have revived the courts of the old
village communities ; they have separated the Execu-
tive from the Judiciary ; representative Government
has been carried as far as it has been in Germany, They
are therefore face to face with financial problems. They
have managed, however, to lower their land assessment,
and if it is, nominally, not so low as under our rule, it
is levied with less mechanical accuracy, and the financial
officers contend that it presses less severely on the
people. A kind of graduated income tax is 'in opera-
tion ; and although there is no limitation upon the
amount which may be borrowed on land, a form of the
Homestead Law protects the cultivator from the money-
lender, who would sell him up altogether. Fired with
enthusiasm for the work of Mr. Charles Booth and Mr.
Rowntree, and also determined to carry out in Baroda
what he used to plead with us to do in our territories,
Mr. R. C. Dutt, the Prime Minister, has just fore-
shadowed a scientific inquiry into the economic con-
dition of the people with a view to making further
alterations in the incidence of taxation. 1

1 He died, unfortunately, a few weeks after I saw him.

20 IN BARODA

To this, and much more of the same kind, we listen
in the cool hall of the State Guest House, where Ministers
come to tell us of the dreams they are dreaming. As
we follow these programmes, problems which come
from the essence of things rise up in our minds. Is
India to respond to this ? Or will she, like a great
giant disturbed by some troublesome creature, put her
hand out and with a gentle tap annihilate it ? That is
the Indian problem, so far as I can yet see.

As I was thinking it over they came to take us to the
palaces. There are three of them glittering and shining
all day in the sun. As you approach they rise above
you 'in haughty strength, their marbles spuming you
by their purity, their mosaics despising you for your
lowliness and poverty. But the instant you cross their
thresholds the hand of decay is outstretched to meet
you. The West, meanly respectable, is fading and
rotting in the Indian heat. The paint of pictures made
in London and Paris studios has cracked, has softened,
has ran. The gilt on English frames has tarnished and
chipjoed. The inlaid work of Shoreditch and Hackney
has become parched like a clayfield in a dry season.
The bats have desecrated the rooms ; the straws of
nests built in the sandal-wood joists have lodged in
their comers. Outside brazen bulls cast in Birmingham
bellow at marble ladies fashioned by machinery, and
they stand in groves and beds, and are fanned by breezes
from lakes planned and made by gardeners from Kew.
But again the sun of India slowly masters the will of
man. Miles of hose pipes try to moisten the parched
soil and cool the roots of the grass and the thousand
flowers. Standing on the balconies of the Lakshmi Vilas
Palace one can see the straggle going on as one can see
the progress of a contest between wrestlers. And as
one looks down upon, the strife, one’s eyes become blind
to flowers and gardens and sun. One sees races and
civilisations, man and nature, gripping each other, and
the sphinx face of Destiny, who knows all but tells
nothing, looking on.

i is-: ' Vi

AMONG- THE RAJPUTS

North from Baroda the country becomes a gr ea t
SSF f^/fy muc , h the South African veldt,
CS S betwe “ the M °dder River and Magers-
fontem. The men change. They become more jaSnty
m them carnage. They part their beards in the iniddle
and comb back the sides to their ears. They carry
ancient guns and old-world scimitars. When the sun
sinks in the evening a thousand herds of cattle wander
nome over innumerable tracks converging on the vil-

ml’ ! i>raS 1S womffl )PUt “ a ’ ““ h ° me of P 1 ™* ™°rs
Baroda, with a smile, says, “I am modern 55 • R a i.
putana, with a haughty sniff, says, “I keep the 1 old
vrnys. Commerce and politics have both invaded parts
of it ; some of its chiefs hanker after English MstiS
But these degeneracies are still exceptions. *'

pjr 16 ciuef 1 met > file well-known Sir

Piafcap Smgh, of whom so many romantic tales are tnW
was deploring the fact that the hand oi ale v^npon
tX ,l h0t ,™ s ™ chance of another ™ Tnd

to die^nTbS^'p th n e -f e WaS tlmt he would W
to die on a bed. Pax Bntanmca was nothin^ to him

except an ev deuce that the Golden Age had »sse?

Pie was praying to be allowed to lead his

agamst Bengal politicians, and was promising to do the

necessary damage with the handles of the dubs It t

Si Wh0 f “ “K*** to have said that wS' a few

horns of the British withdrawal from India there would

?o tlnt“eS e °He " rgin Wt . i '> Bengal-o«hSg
f«n»us Rajput heroes >Vo“ Staf^elfd^lS?

soul was rejoiced. He perfcJed his

22 ; . AMONG THE RAJPUTS

shipped the gods, bestowed charity, and withdrew his
thoughts from the world.” Two or three days under
the same roof as Sir Pratap made me understand the
spirit of Chitor.

Whoever comes to India and does not sit down on
the plain below Chitor with a history at his elbow and
a plan on his lap, and then go up the hill — on an ele-
phant if possible— to the ruined temples, palaces,
bazaars, tanks, and the still almost perfect towers,
might as well have stayed at home. What man has
read Tod’s story of Chitor without feeling something
of a hero himself ? As a tale of the finest chivalry it
should be in our school books. My friends are dinning
it into my ears that there is no India. I do not know,
but Chitor gives me something to go upon.

Round these walls tradition has woven most sacred
garlands. Wending one’s way up the long zigzag road,
which is flanked all along by massive walls and spanned
every now and again fay a frowning gate, one may still
imagine that he hears the tramp of the Rajput cavalry
going out to die ; and it is easy to imagine that the
hum of voices and other sounds which comes down and
goes up from the villages at the top and bottom of the
hill is the bridal song of the women going to their
fearful death by fire in the cavern of the palace rather
than become prisoners in the hands of the Moguls. The
whole place is a vast temple of chivalry. Through
these narrow lanes and over these ruined heaps one
should go bare of head and foot. The sun set whilst
we lingered there. Suddenly the land was filled with
the beating of tom-toms ; lights flickered from the
temples ; the hum of prayers rose on every hand ;
queer forms moved in the gloom. The spell of the
Mighty Past fell upon us.

At Chitor the past is dead, and only comes from its
grave in the twilight. Rut not far off is the new capit al
of the State, Udaipur, the site of huts erected by the
fugitive Pratap when pressed by Akbar, Here the Old
Time still lives in the light of day.

AMONG THE RAJPUTS ' 23

The railway stops far out from the confines of Udaipur
as an unclean thing stops at the threshold of a temple,
and we had to drive for a mile or so to get to the city.
Towering over the town are great white palaces and
temple domes. The hills around are capped by palaces
and forts and temples. Holy men wander unkempt,
ash -covered, almost naked, in its streets, or sit beneath
its trees contemplating the Eternal and the all-compre-
hending Void.

Hardly had we arrived when we were told that a
religious procession had started from the palace. The
crowd came blowing horns, beating drums and cymbals,
on foot, on horses, on elephants. The Maharana rode
under a golden umbrella towards the rear. The rains
were over, and the time had come when of old the
chiefs gathered round their ruler and prepared to go out
with him to give battle. But before they went they
had to propitiate the gods. Therefore a holy man came
and sat for ten days in a temple without food or sleep
holding a sword on his knees, and every evening before
sunset the Maharaha. and his warriors went in state to
do homage before him. They used to chant sacred
songs and recite sacred verses on the way. That was
the procession we saw. The sword of a famous ancestor
had been sent from the palace the day before, and the
Yogi sat with it in the temple as though the Pax Britan-
nica had not been declared, and as though other sounds
than those of reaping still followed the rains.

Next morning the Maharana sent for us. Inside the
palace all was Oriental bustle. Camels, horses, fowls,
peacocks, elephants wandered in the courtyards, the
white walls of which flared in the sun. A perfect maze
of moving humanity, from whining babes to the de-
crepit aged, moved about. Suitors with their petitions
sat at the doorways, soldiers paced up and down in the
arches with swords on their thighs, scribes and courtiers
lounged against pillars and stretched themselves on
marble benches. Through endless passages, up in-
numerable stairs we were taken, and at length were

24 AMONG THE RAJPUTS

ushered into the presence of a small, keen-eyed, grey-
bearded, dignified man. He toyed with a sword which
lay across his knees, and explained that he had been
busv with his devotions.

We were away back in the Middle Ages, in the pres-
ence of a man whose greatest boast was that no Muslim
blood ever tainted his own, and that he had been true
to the Rajput motto, “ He who keeps the faith is pre-
served by God.” He stood for the old ways, he told
us. When he goes out into his domain 3000 retainers
follow him. He sacrifices every morning to his gods ;
he sits on his judgment-seat and hears the petitions of
his people ; he keeps his sword-arm strong and crafty
by hewing at clay images. Even his clocks decline to
bow the knee to our noon, as his ancestors declined to
accept the yoke of the Mogul— so he lives half an hour
behind official time. I do not know to what enormities
of heathendom I committed myself, but I said it was
well that the old should not die. He smiled approvingly,
murmured that some of his chiefs were not so faithful
as himself, shifted his sword, held out his hand, and we
returned through the courtiers, the soldiers, and the
suitors into the noisy and the crowded courtyards below.

In the evening we sat on the verandah of the Guest
House, up on a hill commanding wide views over
mountain and plain and lake, watching the sun set
and listening to an old man tell of Pratap, the foe of
Akbar, and other Rajput heroes and Rajput battles.
Youth returned and swelled in our veins. The glamour
of chivalry enthralled us. But when the pinks and the
yellows were deepening into night, the tales were
broken by the crunching of horses’ feet on the gravel.
We were like sleeper’s roused from dreaming. After all,
we were of the West, and in the garb of the West we
had to go out and dine with the representative of the
British Raj in this old-world State. I am afraid he
thought us very dull. I was careering over the plains
of Rajputana, living in times that are gone, and with
men who have been but dust for centuries.

AT SIMLA

Simla is eight thousand feet above sea-level, and ten
thousand miles above the heads of the people. The
train up to these heights twists and doubles, snorts and
puffs, races and almost sticks ; it pirouettes round
corners and glides along the edges of precipices.

At first the journey is interesting. The mountains
receive their visitor with regal splendour. They throw
their arms about him ; they envelop him in their
mightiness ; they soothe him and overwhelm him by
their massive grandeur. But they pall as the hours go,
and before Simla is reached the flesh has become weary
and the eye tired, and it is a jaded and blase wanderer
who at length beholds the sacred snow-clad mountains
from which the Ganges comes, and alights amongst the
dwelling-places of those who are permitted to live on
this Olympus.

They tell us that the railway journey, with the ex-
pectations of its start dying away to the weariness of
its finish, is an allegorical representation of the way,
which men have to walk from the day they pass into
the service to that when Simla opens its gates to them,
and that the Government of India defends the other-
wise indefensible loss on this railway on the ground of
its moral value. On this, as on other vital matters, the
Annual Report on the Material and Moral Progress of
the East Indies is silent.

So soon as the wanderer steps out of the train lie
knows he has come to a town unique amongst towns.
Simla hangs on to the hill-tops by its eyebrows, and
earthquakes try every now and again to" shake it off.
When earthquakes fail, the heavens open their doors

26 . AT SIMLA

and deluges fall to wash it away. But it sticks tight,
like a cowboy on a bucking steed, and preserves its
dignity. And who is to write of that dignity ? It per-
vades Simla as the smell of cows pervades some Hindu
temples. You have simply to sit down by the side of
the road and feel it glide past. If it now and again
merges into the ridiculous— well, that is always the
flaw in the material of dignity.

The roads climb up hill-faces, and they are narrow
and cannot be laid properly. Therefore only three
households of the gods are allowed to drive upon them.
The rest of the dwellers must walk, or must be drawn
by four men in rickshaws Which look like dilapidated
bath-chairs. Some of the more permanent sojourners
have private establishments of bath-chairs. They have
a staff of runners in uniform, and their ladies sally forth
with these in the afternoon, and, arrayed in all the
glories of the West, are pulled up hill and down dale —
like proud mothers out for an airing after an interesting
event. I have been told that only those who have
been in Simla can imagine what the more delectable
parts of heaven are like. I have also been told by poor,
overworked, overworried, and overspending officials that
that is the nonsense poured into the minds of innocent
Europeans who know not the world. But I must mite
of what I saw, of how I felt— and of how, ultimately, I
laughed and sorrowed.

Taken individually, the Indian official has more than
the average amount of virtue. He is sensitive and intro-
spective, for he suffers from fever and exile, and so his
very virtues become a burden to him. He is honest, he
worships efficiency, he is sensible of his high calling to
rule equitably. lie does his best in these respects, and
he never spares himself in the doing of it. But his
path is through a jungle infested by troublesome beasts
of prey. There is the House of Commons on the one
hand, there are the educated, agitating natives on the
other. Pursuing his way alone, as he has so often to do,
through this weary land, his mind never shifts from his

AT SIMLA

work, his thoughts never turn from his honesty. He
takes few holidays, for he spends his cold weather in
his district, and with the hot weather comes that
maddest of all the mad doings of the English in India—
the emigration of the chiefs of governments to some
hill station — and he goes up to meet the rest of the
headmen of his caste and burn incense with them in
their departmental temples, to attend religious dances,
dinners, and receptions at the Viceregal abode, and to
purify himself by writing reports and compiling sta-
tistics. This goes on for years without a break, except
when he is in bed with fever, or when he runs home in
a hurry with a broken-down wife or a child ready for
exile. His Government pays handsomely for a daily
supply to him of home news, which is both prejudiced
and inaccurate, and appears to be designed to upset
his nerves ; and if his Government does not do him
that service, his newspapers will do it for a copper a
few hours later. Thus fate is hard on him. Worried
in India, told twice a day that the homeland is
going to the dogs, how can the poor man keep morally
fit ?“

Moreover, he feels that prestige is the bulwark of his
rule. We do not rule India by the sword, but by our
prestige. “ The sahib is a man of power ” ; so says
the Indian ; and, adds the sahib himself, “ Akbar, and
not a Whitehall official, is the potentate upon whom I
should model myself.” Thus it happens that when a
Member of the House of Commons puts questions about
the sahib, the sahib resents it. He constructs theories
about the questioning Member ; the Anglo-Indian
Press assists Ms imagination. So the sahib becomes
more dignified, more introspective, more conscious of
his own virtue, more resentful about questions in Par-
liament, less careful of his manners. He murmurs more
devoutly about “ prestige,” that occult abracadabra
which surrounds him with magical influences and which
makes him sacred. He thus tends to become a thing
apart, to become a Rajah who is convinced that his

AT SIMLA

ancestor was a moon or a sun or other respectable deity.
As a matter of simple and sober fact, he is only a good
average Englishman, with remarkably little knowledge
of the world and of what is going on in it, with an
honest, bluff sense of justice and a real desire to do
his work well. He was put in an isolated post in India
at too early an age perhaps ; he had to pass examina-
tions which did not really winnow the chaff from the
wheat ; he has to do his best to keep fit in a climate
which does not give him a chance ; his whole life, and
especially his arrangement of work, are unnatural ; he
lives in an alien civilisation and has too defective an
imagination to get into vital touch with it. These are
his troubles. A little more sympathy with the West
from which he came would help him in his trials ; but
as it is he is in India but not of it, of the West but not
in it. All he can do, therefore, is to constitute the most
clearly defined of all the castes in India, the ruling caste,
and become a god sitting on an Olympus.

As such you see him in Simla, walking or riding
with dignified helmet on his head and impressive cane
in his hand — grave, upright, supermanly in aspect and
demeanour. A stranger from Mars dropped on the top
of this hill would certainly inquire, “ Who are these
kings ? From what other world do they come ? ”
And he would put his question in sober seriousness.
For the Indian official looks the part he has chosen for
himself. Indeed, he is as near the perfect official, whose
type is to be found in heaven, as any whom I have
seen. As a matter of fact, if he would only read Radical
papers exclusively for a year, so as to acquire some
knowledge of Western politics, and confine his other
reading for the same space of time to works of humour,
so as to become a little thick-skinned, nobody on this
earth would be like him. I have met some such. No
place where I have been is without them altogether.
They are the salt of the service, and if Lord Morley
could only discover them (he has put his finger on one
or two already), the British Raj could laugh at sedition.

AT SIMLA

and the British citizen would need to have no qualms
about the government of India.

But a great impediment has been put recently in the
way of the salvation of the mass. Some time ago a
poet came to their aid, and wrote “Pagett, si.p.” The
System in Simla sighed with satisfaction. It fashioned
the rhyme into breastplates and helmets, swords and
spears, greaves and gyves. “ Morning Prayers,” the
“ Manual of Deportment,” “ How to Approach an
A.D.C.,” Reuter’s telegrams, The Pioneer, were all put
into the background as things of offence, defence, and
consolation. The inquirer who comes to India and who
asks about the extravagant waste of money on public
undertakings, from railways to Simla roads, about the
whacking of natives, about the mystery of the rickshaw,
about the bribery that is honeycombing the lower
strata of the public service, gets some information
politely, but “the man who knows ” is sad at heart.
He is certain that the poor stranger does not under-
stand, that he will not have the intelligence to steer
clear of educated natives, that he will not be able to
appreciate the Indian truth. He is a fish out of Ins
moral water. And so, whilst the System explains and
defends its absurdities to you, it also seems to say,
“ But excuse me, my dear innocent. You must re-
member you can never understand the occult, which
is the truth upon which I am based. Let me get up
on my pinnacle and recite a little wise poetry to you.”
Up it goes and begins :

Pagett, m.p., was a liar, and affluent liar therewith —

He spoke of the heat of India. . . .

And you feel very humble and very angry — and the
gulf between you and the System widens. If you are a
profane man, you swear ; if a passive Christian, you
walk sorrowfully away ; if an ordinary person with
common sense, you laugh boisterously.

THE KHYBER AND THE PATHAN

The Pathan is a Mohammedan who lives in the hills
between India and Afghanistan, and is a delightful
fellow. He has no bows and salaams. He looks you
in the face as one gentleman looks another, and is as
interested in you as you are in him. His smile is per-
fect ; his face is as handsome as a woman’s. The fact
that he is likely to be shot one day by a neighbour
from behind a boulder seems to raise his thoughts
above the mundane affairs of life, and he swaggers
along prepared to take pot-luck when it comes. He
holds life at a low fee; he is a humorist. There has
been nobody like him since the peace between England
and Scotland was cemented, and the Borderer and the
Highlander both bade the world adieu in consequence.
Even the blindest Anglo-Indian cannot despise him.
He is a man and a brother amongst white men.

I have not been able to make up my mind whether
the following story, which seems to be quite authentic,
shows the humorist, the religious fanatic, the grasping
man of thrift, or the ready taker of human life. Per-
haps it shows a mingling of all those qualities, and
there is no good Pathan without them. A Mullah
appeared one day in a village and proceeded to make
his claims upon its temporalities. The levy he im-
posed was held to be heavy, and he explained to the
villagers that it had to be so on account of their own
religious shortcomings, shown by the fact that no tomb
of a holy man was within their borders. The villagers
grumbled, retired to consider the claim, and presently
returned. “ It is quite true,” announced their head-
man, “ that this village possesses no holy man’s tomb

THE KHYBER AND THE PATHAN Si

and that we deserve your frowns. That has long been
a cause of sorrow to ourselves. We have therefore de
cided to end this undesirable state of things at once
est mischief befall us. You yourself have freat fame
01 holiness, and you will now die and your tomb will

th e at n vhL“ 1 St - , N ° Wanderin ^ M ^ow condemns
that village, for there is a tomb in it which glares with

whitewash during the day and which shines in the Imht

of glimmering lamps at night. The holiness of the

X d f “ S S I y itS ne «t Ws > “d it. people now
niia it easier to bow hi daily prayer to the fW rwi

whose Prophet was Mohammed.

. In tJie m °dern world the Pathan is a trafficker

totalS'usmy 1- and afh^ is , forbidde « h Y Ka Koran

“sis&s

- m establishing agricultural banks in some parts of tb.
north-west where they are most required. P But L s
proving too clever for the Koran. He appoints Lents

making 1 /bold and^short^h^? > T d , some * ime s
$&*** f s aspect,

Mohammed to be antiquated, and withmif ^ " i

of conscience, lends a r&ee in t£ momta° ‘Xlste S
>n the evening, and pockets it with an Sin ailfSon
In the capacity of money-lender he is drifting south

S-H.SI sistpcSSrt^^r

KsIThrift ° f S,thy “« *

He believes in rifles, and despises bombs For th*
same reason he holds the Babu in eont £ ^

mni? a TT ra t and if cau £ bt red-handed he dies liS a
man. He has no affection for us but C vh i ■
great respect. During one of nZ \ * bolds lls m

the fmnL o p ii ot our recent campaigns on

fhc ene m ^: m Te^X^ b, S

THE IvlIYBEH AND THE PATHAN

The Pathan is a Mohammedan who lives in the hills
between India and Afghanistan, and is a delightful
fellow. He has no bows and salaams. He looks you
in the face as one gentleman looks another, and is as
interested in you as you are in him. His smile is per-
fect ; his face is as handsome as a woman’s. The fact
that he is likely to be shot one day by a neighbour
from behind a boulder seems to raise his thoughts
above the mundane affairs of life, and lie swaggers
along prepared to take pot-luck when it comes. He
holds life at a low fee ; he is a humorist. There has
been nobody like him since the peace between England
and Scotland was cemented, and the Borderer and the
Highlander both bade the world adieu in consequence.
^Even the blindest Anglo-Indian cannot despise him.
He is a man and a brother amongst white men.

I have not been able to make up my mind whether
the following story, which seems to be quite authentic,
" shows the humorist, the religious fanatic, the grasping
man of thrift, or the ready taker of human life. Per-
haps it shows a mingling of all those qualities, and
there is no good Pathan without them. A Mullah
appeared one day in a village and proceeded to make
his claims upon its temporalities. The levy he im-
posed was held to be heavy, and lie explained to the
villagers that it had to be so on account of their own
’ religious shortcomings, shown by the fact that no tomb
of ;a holy' man was within their borders. The villagers
grumbled, retired to consider the claim, and presently
returned. “ It is quite true,” announced" their head*'
unan, 4 ' that this; 'village 'possesses no' holy man’s tomb

30 ■

THE KHYBER AND THE PATHAN 81

and that we deserve your frowns. That has long been
a cause of sorrow to ourselves. We have therefore de-
cided to end this undesirable state of things at once
lest mischief befall us. You yourself have great fame
for holiness, and you will now die and your tomb will
be in our midst.” No wandering Mullah now condemns
that village, for there is a tomb in it which glares with
whitewash during the day and which shines in the light
of glimmering lamps at night. The holiness of the
village is envied by its neighbours, and its people now
find it easier to bow in daily prayer to the One God
whose Prophet was Mohammed.

In the modern world the Pathan is a trafficker. He
jobs horses and lends money. That shows a wonderful
faculty for accommodating the inner light to the outer
darkness. For the Pathan is forbidden by his Koran
to take usury, and at home he generally* follows the
Koran in this respect. Plence there has been trouble
in establishing agricultural banks in some parts of the
north-west where they are most required. But he is
proving too clever for the Koran. He appoints agents,
through whom he receives his gains, and sometimes
making a bold and a short cut of it, he becomes a
Modernist in this respect, holds the economics of
Mohammed to be antiquated, and, without a qualm
of conscience, lends a rupee in the morning, calls for it
in the evening, and pockets it with an anna in addition.
In the capacity of money-lender he is drifting south-
wards and eastwards. Whether he will ever rank with
the Hindu in this respect remains to be seen. He has
only begun the job ; but his love of filthy lucre and Iris
habits of thrift will carry him far.

He believes in rifles, and despises bombs. For the
same reason he holds the Babu in contempt. He dearly
loves a raid, and if caught red-handed he dies like a
man. He has no affection for us, but he holds us in
great respect. During one of our recent campaigns on
the frontier a Pathan company was blazing away at
the enemy from the ancient rifles with which we have

32 THE KHYBER AND THE. PATHAN

armed them, and with old-fashioned gunpowder. An
English regiment with which the company was co-
operating, assuming that whoever used black powder
was the heathen, poured into their colleagues a hail of
bullets, “ This is too bad, 58 remarked a Pathan to his
officer. £i We do not mind fighting the English if that
is the game, but both the English and the others — that
is not fair.” That is the Pathan all over.

Four of them w r ere sent out with us as an escort one
day, and we fell a-talking. They told me of one of
their comrades-in-arms who went to his village on a
week-end leave of absence. During the two days he
was away he had stormed and blown up a fort erected
by one with whom he had a feud, killed two men, and
burned a village. .He turned up at the beginning of
the week as though nothing had happened ; and as the
scene of the exploit was outside the British sphere of
occupation, he made no secret of his Saturday and
Sunday employment. I asked one of them if he was
the proud possessor of a blood feud. “ No,” he x’eplied,
“ I live too near to the British border.” But he looked
more like a child who has been asked if it has a six-
pence, and in replying that it has not, indicates : “ But
would I not like to have one ? ” , : .

To get into the Pathan’s mind one has to go up
into the mountains of the frontier, where he lives.
There every village is a fort. Strong mud walls sur-
round it, and a citadel rises up in its midst. If it is in
the neighbourhood of a stream or a neutral road, like
the Ivhyber, there will likely be a trench dug down to
the stream or the road for purposes of protection. In
some cases the trench may be a tunnel for extra safety.
Over the villages tower the hills, bare rocks glittering
in the sun and fiercely hot like ovens. On little plateaux
or at the bottom of river beds small fields of maize and
other grain may be seen, and on the bare mountain
sides or in the dusty channels that are Watercourses
diirhig the rains, the village flocks of goats find some-
thing to eat.

THE KHYBER AND THE PATHAN 88

The domestic side of the Pathan is seen in the Khyber.
The Khyber road itself is sacred against him. He can
walk on it, but he may not fight on it. If he meet his
enemy there, both are in sanctuary and greet each other
like Christians. A murder on this road is an offence
against the British Government, and would be pun-
ished. Thus, law and order runs in a channel through
the country towards Cabul.

True, the law and order still needs the support of
the rifle, but not so much as it used to do. On Tuesdays
and Fridays the British Government sends an escort of
troops up the Pass to protect caravans going between
India and Afghanistan, and a special force called the
Khyber Rifles has been enrolled for this purpose.
Therefore, on those days, and on special occasions when
necessary, a cavalcade starts from the Jamrud Fort,
on the Indian side of the Pass. Hundreds of camels and
scores of donkeys and buffaloes, laden with everything,
from grand pianos to scrap-iron, fall into line. The
march to Cabul begins. The dusty, red road ascends
and becomes steely grey in colour. The mountains
close in. With rifles slung across their backs, the hill-
men appear tending their flocks, or whacking their
donkeys, or wandering aimlessly about, thinking per-
haps of the good old times when caravans gave sport
and an ampler living. Silhouetted against the sky on
every hill-top two or three guards are seen keeping
watch, and forts are frequently passed. As the road
winds in its ascent, magnificent views of the great Indus
Plain open out below, with Peshawar in the far dis
tance.

But they say that the escorts now are but ceremonies
in which the realities of past times survive. We went
through with four men ; whereas, we were told by one
of them, a hundred would not have been s uffi cient a
few years ago. And yet one never knows what the
future has in store for the Pathan. I doubt if we have
heard the last of these Dugald Dalgettys of the border.
Gun-running from Muscat has become a great trade —

84 THE KHYBER AND THE PATHAN

we were told of one tribal family that was trying to
raise enough wind to buy a cannon ; and the hillmen
are better armed than our own native levies. It is
said that the tribes are getting restive in parts, and I
have been told tales — most of them probably baseless' —
of religious societies and Mullahs whispering dangerous
things in the ears of the Devout,

Of this, however, we may be certain. The Pathan
is not in the least afraid of us. He is prepared to play
at targets with us or with anybody else if the spirit
moves him. And the spirit can easily move him. The
frontier is still the seat of mysterious religious and
political movements. It is said that he has been follow-
ing with much headshaking recent events in Turkey,
for, unlike the younger Mohammedans of the plains
below, he has his doubts about recent events in the
world of Islam. Moreover, we have driven him up into
the hills and have confined him too much. Life be-
comes harder for him; time now flows slowly and in-
ertly through his sand-glass. The call to action would
find him quite willing, and he would have no thought
of what the consequences would be. It would be the
will of the Lord. It would be the fate of man. It would
be the event foreordained since the beginning of the
w r orld. , And the Pathan for a few brief weeks would
take his rifle off his back, and the hills would echo and
re-echo the crack of guns and the cries of fighting-men.
The Pathan would be enjoying himself.

AT LAHORE

The first thing which one learns in India is to take it
in bits. The political movements in Bengal, Bombay,
and the Punjab present differences of method and out-
look which must influence conclusions about Indian
nationalism.

Lahore is the capital of the Punjab, and the centre
of its political activities. Here one meets amongst leaders
Lajpat Itai, and amongst organisations the Arya
Somaj. Moreover, as in the Punjab the Hindu and the
Mohammedan practically balance each other, it is in
the Punjab that one can best understand the difficulties
which must beset a Nationalist movement in India.
When one has gone round the Arya Somaj school and
college in the morning, under the guidance of the Somaj
leaders, interviewed the reception committee of the
Indian National Congress in the afternoon, dined with
the Moslem League in the evening, and filled in the
interstices with interviews with British officials, one
begins to understand the intricacy of Lahore — that is.
Punjab— politics.

The centre and source of Punjab activities are in the
Arya Somaj, and its propaganda must be first of all
understood. The Somaj was founded in Bombay in
1872, but it never took root there, nor did it succeed
in Bengal or Madras. The Punjab, with its religious
conflicts, its religious austerities, and its puritanical
type of mind, gave it a welcome and became its home.
The United Provinces are also congenial to it, and
contain some 400 of its branches.

By the Anglo-Indian officials the Somaj is regarded
' .. 35

36 AT LAHORE

as a political body— as a society which has some occult
creed and pursues its wicked way under doaksjaf deceit.
Commissioners and deputy commissioners, district
magistrates, collectors, and policemen regard the Somaj
as a seditious organisation, and indictments have been
known to be made against men solely on the ground
that they belonged to this society , 1 and they have been
bound over to keep the peace because they were found
preaching its doctrines. The Society has therefore come
to consider itself persecuted ; it is glorying in the
fact ; it records its tribulations with flourishes of
trumpets in every issue of its official organ ; it appeals
for support for its members when they are arrested —
and the Punjab officials play in the most innocent way
into its hands.

The Arya Somaj is purely a religious society, and
was founded to carry on the teachings of Swami Daya-
nand Sarasvati, one of the many holy men who arise in
the course of a generation in Hindu religious life. Born
in 1824, the Swami died in 1883. Stated in a sentence,
his teaching was directed towards bringing Hindu
religion back to the purity of the Vedas. The worship
of idols had deteriorated the Hindu and had led to all
manner of social evils. God alone should be revered ;
the rule of caste should be broken ; early marriages should
be ended; education in accordance with classical
Hindu methods should be given to the people. In this
there was nothing new. The Arya Somaj holds some
of its most characteristic tenets in common with the
Brahmo Somaj — that product of Western culture and
religious liberalism. And yet it hates the Brahmo.
The Arya Somaj began from below with dogmas ,* the
Brahmo Somaj from above with catholicity. The one
is aggressively Hindu; the other is as generously
eclectic. The Arya Somaj is one part of that charac-
teristic revival of the ancient ways which is going on

1 A common item in indictments for sedition is that the accused is
a member of the Arya Somaj. The recent Patiala sedition case was a
gross example of this.

AT LAHORE 87

in India to-day* It dreams of a ■world-dominion for
the Vedas.

But the Swami inculcated a spirit as well as a doctrine*
Part of his revelation was that the Aryan was the chosen
people, the Vedas the chosen gospel, India the chosen
■ land. His language was not always polite,'; ' his maimer
was often provocative. He was a limb of the Church
militant. 1 2 Austere, independent, dogmatic, and puri-
tanical was his character, and he imparted those qualities
to his followers. You meet them, therefore, to-day in
Lahore, their capital city, dour and determined, ready
to sacrifice and be sacrificed, propagandists of an
accomplished order. They are indeed the Puritans of
Hinduism — and it is well for us to remember that
Puritanism became political only under an intolerable
Government. The Aryas are opposed to the Moham-
medans ; • they are opposed to the Christians ; they
attack both. They ask no favours from the Government*
they do not hang about the verandahs of commissioners.
Their one' thought is to convert India to their ; views.

With this main purpose in mind, they have studied
the methods of other propagandists. What have the
Christians done ? Established schools and orphanages.*
The Arya Somaj determined to do the same. What has
the Government done ? Established famine relief
schemes, promoted education, and so on. The Somaj
promotes famine and other charitable relief, and is
working out its own educational 1 theories. Its schools
are excellent, and its members have been special friends

1 The best account of the Swami and his work is "An English
Translation of Satyarth Prakash ” (Yirajanand Press, Lahore), 1908.
The book is also a most characteristic production of the Hindu mind.

2 The members started relief for children left destitute by the
famine of 1896 - 7 . ^ They then brought 250 Hindu children into five
orphanages. The bad times of 1899 made them renew their efforts.
This is a significant sentence from the Report of the Lahore Society for
the period between October, 1899, and November, 1900. It refers to
a that premier nobleman of Jodhpur/’ and describes him : "Absorbed
as he was in the work of administration in general, he could not do
much in the way of checking the tide of missionary enterprise in the
matter of orphan relief.”

AT LAHORE

of female education. But its greatest asset is the spirit
of its members. It is not always lovely and attractive.
It is perhaps hard and bigoted. But it is self-sacrificing,
and when embodied in such men as Lala Hans Raj, the
ascetic Principal of the Arya College, it flinches at no
obstacle. It has split over meat-eating, and the degree
of austerity to be observed in the education of youth.

Now, this is exactly the kind of movement which the
ordinary British official in India cannot understand.
He suspects it. It seems a menace to him. He reads all
sorts of occult meaning into its teachings and its actions.
Hated by the Mohammedans and the Christians alike,
the Anglo-Indian calls it seditious and persecutes its
members. It thus is enabled to pose befoi’e the people
as the body specially selected by the governing authority
for punishment, with the result that the wrath of
magistrates does it more good than the excellence of
its own propaganda.

As illustrations of the bogy character of the Somaj,
I may cite two things. I was told by a British official
that in a hidden corner of the grounds of the Arya
College there was a place where the students were
taught wrestling — in view of eventualities— -but that I
would not be shown that. Wien we were walking round
the grounds, accompanied by the Arya Somaj Committee,
a sand-patch, "which I had not noticed to be of any
importance, v r as pointed out to me. They laughed
merrily. “ This,” the chairman said, “ is where we
secretly teach our seditious students to wrestle ! ” It
was nothing but what one sees in nearly every village,
for wrestling is a very old Indian sport. If, for instance,
the tourist who finds his w r ay to the show city of Fatepur
Sikri will turn down to the left from the Akbar entrance-
gate to where the hand carpet-weavers work, he will
find a little square of well-trodden sand where the
youths keep up this exercise.

The second matter is regarding the Gurukul. This
is a school which a section of the Somaj started to revive
Indian education on the most extreme traditional lines.

AT LAHORE 89

The pupils are taught the virtues and practices of an
; asceticism which few in India practise to-day. Next
year, when the first batch of boys leaves, I was told that
yellow-robed sedition-mongers would be available to
.roam over the country, nominally as Somaj propa-
gandists. When I obtained the real facts, they were
that two brothers alone leave next year, and that the
present intention of their parents is to send them to
England. I refer to these two things, not merely
because they are whispered about here in India, but
because they have figured in Indian controversies at
home.

In brief : the Arya Somaj is a religious organisation,
Indian in its inspiration, Punjabi in its characteristics.

It proclaims one God ; it is at war w ith superstition* jj£

| s wi nning ..back to Hind uism men who. ...had., been con-

verted to Mohammedanism and Christianity. It also
opposes the quiescent modes of worship, and imposes
the test of conduct upon its professed followers. 44 Learn
to live ^ is one of the^texts

Eangifig in. the Council Chamber of its college at Lahore.
Another is “ Victory from within or a mighty death
without.”

If the Government would only let it alone it would
soon reach its proper place in Indian life. At present
the Government is endowing it with fictitious power by
persecuting its members.

PUNJAB CAMPS

Bengal gives life to Indian Nationalism ; but the Punjab
supplies it with its problems. To begin with, the Punjab
is “ dour,” and the Punjabi has been described as the
Scotsman of India. A revival in Hindu religion there
means an uprising of Puritanism, whilst in Bengal it
produces something akin to a Catholic movement
It was because Swami Dayanand, the founder of the
Arya Somaj, was a rough Philistine like Luther that his
society has flourished in the Indus valley.

There is a good deal of the West about the Punjabi.
But he is an Indian. He will have no importations either
of politics or of faith. If he throws the priesthood of
the Brahmins to the four winds, he does not create as his
justification a new eclectic faith like that of the -Brahma'
Somaj ; he goes back to his own scriptures with the
same fidelity as the scientific Christian returns to his
creeds. When he found his faith anew, moreover, the
Punjabi was not content to say, “ This is for the salva-
tion of India,” but “This being for the salvation of
India must also be for the salvation of the world.”

Now, if the political stage of the Punjab were occupied
by this “ dour ” man and the British official alone,
things would be lively. But the situation is not so
simple as that. The Punjab is the Ulster of India, for in
it there is a Mohammedan community somewhat greater
in numbers than the Hindu community, and the Mo-
hammedans have pitched a political camp of their own,
where their own flags fly and their own drums beat.
The difference between the two is soon discovered;
but if you try to find it in a programme you will be
baffled, for the Mohammedan as a representative on a
Council will back practically everything which his
Hindu colleague will propose. :

PUNJAB CAMPS

4 *

■ A

■t

But the Indian Mohammedan is not a Nationalist —
at present. He speaks of “my community,” not of
“India.” He thinks of religious associations, not of
political ones. Above all, he distrusts the Hindu. He
knows that he has neglected opportunities of education,
which the Hindu has embraced, that he has been careless
of his well-being when the Hindu has been nurturing
his own. He is like a man who feels that he is sur-
rounded by a network of impalpable powers working
for his ill, and that he cannot sleep lest they should
undo him. To the Punjab Mohammedan, Hinduism
in public life is a Freemasonry. Wherever a Hindu
goes he leaves a breach open for a stream of Hinduism,
to follow. The Mohammedan regards the Hindu as
some suffragettes regard man.

This is the present frame of mind of the Mohammedan.
He feels he must have a camp of his own, a party to
look after him, and, above all, that his community
must be regarded as a separate political entity and be
represented as such on all legislative councils. Then,
and then only, he says, will he be safe.

In addition to these things, he talks of his greater
loyalty, of the impossibility of Indian self-government
on paper ; but I smile at that. In the Mohammedan
camp there is a store of spare arms for show, and his
acute leaders naturally show them. These arguments
belong to that store. They are only brought out for
effect, though some of our officials think otherwise.
The camp and everything in it is brand-new.

Before exploring the Hindu camp I must say some-
thing about the part which the Government plays.
It is generally conceded in India that the most incom-
petent of the Governments is that of the Punjab. It
takes its stand upon two foundation rocks, “ Prestige ”
and “ Sedition,” the meaning of the former being that
it can do what it likes, and of the latter that if any
Indian questions its doings, his house will be raided
and he will be deported. The very dangerous condition
of the province in 1907, when the Sikh regiments became

42 PUNJAB CAMPS

restive and riots broke out in the Rawal Pindi district,
arose mainly from blundering but well-meaning acts
of the Government, which, had it been in touch with the
people, would never have proposed its Colonisation Bill
in the form in which it was drafted, and would have seen
that the increased land assessments required delicate
and not autocratic handling.

When the storm burst upon it, it shrieked “ Sedition.”
There was a man of the name of Lajpat Rai active in
politics at the time. He was a member of the Arya
Somaj, he w r as a good speaker, he was a “ Congress
wallah.” He was marked for deportation, yet at no time
had the Government a scrap of evidence against him,
except that he was opposing its Colonisation Bill and
holding political meetings. The result was that Lajpat
Rai had to be liberated, and from being a propagandist
he found he had become a leader. He is soured, quite
naturally, and even to-day he cannot take a ticket from
Lahore without some detective finding out where he
is going and without some one molesting him on the
way to show his ticket — a thing which never happens
to the ordinary passenger on Indian railways.

In the frankest possible manner the Punjab Govern-
ment announces from the house-tops that every Arya
is an anarchist and every critic a seditious person. 1
It has no notion of statesmanlike handling, no idea of
political methods. The man in power simply uses his
power, whether it is in the form of a not too honest
detective department, or a not too discriminating
executive and judiciary. Put it as nicely as one may,
the best that can be said is that the Government of
the Punjab and the Hindus are like two very estimable
people with incompatible temperaments who have
unfortunately married each other.

1 In connection with the Patiala Sedition Case (1910), when officials
of the State of Patiala were tried for sedition because they were mem-
bers of the Arya Soma.], some correspondence passed between the
President of the Somaj and the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab,
and the letter which the latter wrote, grudgingly admitting that the
society, might not be so bad as it was painted, left no doubt as to the
real opinion of the Government.

PUNJAB CAMPS ' 43

We now can understand the Hindu camp. It is angry
with the Mohammedans, suspicious of the Government,
and unhappy with itself. It breathes nationalism. Its
prayers, its gods, everything it holds dear are nationalist.
But the Mohammedan as a believer and as a politician
thwarts it. It used to be the only camp, all outside
being a crowd. That is true no longer. At the door
where the office-seeker enters the Mohammedan now
stands petitioning, arguing, threatening, bagging the
crumbs thrown at him, and asserting claims for much
more. When the Government gives him something,
the Hindu sees favouritism in the act, and he has just
presented a long petition of his grievances in this respect.
Above all, the Councils Act has come, and the Moham-
medan has received preferential treatment. The flags
are flying over the Mohammedan camp ; not a square
inch of bunting flies over the Hindu’s head.

His past political idol, the National Congress, degraded
before his eyes, every avenue of constitutional agitation
blocked, every step he takes marked by spies, what
can he do ? He has first of all come to the conclusion
that a united India is yet impossible. He has therefore
ceased to think of a “ National ” Congress, and has
started a “ Hindu ” one. It is tentative as yet, but
any one with an eye to observe can see the drift of things.
Nationalism is splitting up into racialism and religious
sectarianism ; and those who think that an improvement
are welcome to their opinion. The Punjabi has ceased
to believe in the old Moderate leaders, and, in spirit,
is joining with the Extremists — not the anarchists. He
is, therefore, departing from his old political paths and
is striking out into new ones apart from Government
roads. He is to practise self-help, even in social things.
He is to do his own education and his own charity ;
he is to wear his own clothes and patronise only the
products of his own people. From voluntary associa-
tions of the faithful and patriotic the New India is to
be born. He is building up a Hindu Sinn Fein.

: VII

yAw AT BENARES

To the east a tawny band of light spans the horizon ;
overhead the pale, pure crescent of an old moon lies
like a piece of delicate jewellery on dark blue velvet ;
behind to the west the stars are still shining.

It is half an hour from sunrise, and I am hurrying
to the Ganges. The lanes of Benares, from which
offensive smells arise as incense, are just beginning to
bestir themselves. A woman sweeps at her door ; a
figure that has been sleeping in a corner wakes up ; a
man fans a newly lit fire. The tawny light is warming
to pink, and mists begin to rise from the dewy ground.

Suddenly there is an end to the road, and the Ganges
flows at our feet. To the left the river comes down
in a magnificent bend, the banks on the outer curve
being high. There stands Benares — steps, temples,
palaces, rising in sweeping terraces from the water,
the two tall minarets of Aurangzebe’s mosque forming
the crowning point of all. What menace is there in
this incongruous survival here of the work of the bigoted
Mohammedan ? What shadow of the future does it
throw over the holiest ground of Hinduism ?

There is a murmur on the shore ; there is a confused
movement ; there is a sigh as if a waiting people have
seen the sign of deliverance. A hot flame of lire has risen
above the horizon. Prayers are murmured by thousands
of lips; thousands of feet obey the impulse to go for-
ward into the water ; thousands of dark bodies are
bowing in humiliation and adoration, vanishing from
sight below the river, rising dripping to add to the mur-
mur of prayer which goes out in a confused hum to
welcome the sun.

AT BENARES 45

The sun glistens on the little brazen drinking-pots
which the people have brought down to cleanse, and
lights up the many-coloured robes of the worshippers.
White predominates. It glares and challenges every-
thing with its purity. But there are also patches of
green and red, purple and pink, saffron and yellow ;
and they move and mix like a kaleidoscopic mass of
ever-changing pattern. The eye becomes bewildered ;
the mind grasps only mass and motion. Slowly the
stream drifts the boat down, but the scene becomes
more and more a dream, a symbol, a moment in the
eternal pursuit of the Infinite. The murmur seems to
come far down Time. The crowds holding up hands in'
adoration and bowing their heads low in supplication
are but representations of what has gone on through
the ages. The clanging of bells in the temples, the
haunting notes of the reeds played beside the shrines
are but the jarring notes which man always strikes
when, in his moods of self-consciousness, he brings
sacrifices to his gods.

So we drift downwards past places varying in their
degrees of sacredness, past stairs which rise upwards
in uninterrupted flights and others which are broken
by shrines, by masses of bamboo rods bearing wicker-
work baskets at their tips, by platforms where wise
and holy men teach novices the way of life, and in
the end we come to where the poor Hindu body seeks
rest at last. All day long thin blue columns of smoke
rise from this ghat ; all day long they seem to be building
piles of wood there ; all day long processions come
bearing gaily decorated burdens on their shoulders.
The bodies, wrapped up in white, or pink, or yellow cloth,
lie with their feet in the water waiting for the pyre.
You see them in rows lying thus. And the smoke rises
lazily and heavily, and is blown across the bathers.
You hear the crackling of the consuming fire. No one
heeds. “All die,” they say, “ in due time,” and blessed
are those whose ashes mingle with the muddy waters
of the Ganges. So this strange medley of colours, this

AT BENARES

confusion of peoples and tongues, this mingling of the
sublime and the sordid, of life and death so charac-
teristic of India, this cry for Infinite Peace, go on through
the years.

The sun is far up. Bells are tinkling in the temples,
and the hum of chanted prayers falls upon the waters.
We go up from the river to the town — to the Holy City
— to the Rome of India. But who can describe the
life of its narrow lanes ? Who can penetrate their
mysteries of devotion and deceit, of holiness and blaek-
guardliness ? The temples are full. Incessant streams
of people pass and repass their doorways. The heathen
can but peep in, and he sees nothing but brown skins
crowding round repulsive idols, throwing flowers at
them, sprinkling them with water, bowing before them.

Sacred monkeys chatter from innumerable perches,
sacred cows wander round courtyards, sacred men take
toll at every point of vantage. Every foot of the
road is lined with beggars — beggars suffering from every
loathsome disease and every sickening contortion under
the sun. Their howls, their whines, their importunities
make you feel you are treading the corridors which
lead to the places where the lost are in torment.

All is confusion ; nothing rests for a moment ; it is
an endless stream, a ceaseless murmur, a never-slacken-
ing crowd. The air is heavy with the scent of flowers
and the stench of cattle, and is hot and sickening with
humanity. A priest hangs garlands round your neck,
and they seem heavy as iron chains, and their odours
make mists in your eyes. You must get away from the
stifling place.

Out in the courtyard where the air circulates more
freely, and where the clang of the temple bell sounds
remote, one can stand and watch. In one corner is a
fakir in an iron cage, and a group of weary and worn
women are taking counsel of him. Poor "old things,
tlieir wizened breasts, their sunken eyes, their decrepit
attitude, tell how unmercifully life has laid burdens
on their backs. Nearer is the “ Well of Knowledge,”

AT BENARES

round the railings of which a crowd always lingers.
Across the pavement wanders an array of queer creatures
wild and unkempt, covered with ashes and little else.
Standing there, one begins to grasp the spirit of Benares.
One drifts in the muddy, troubled stream of men
seeking for that peace which passeth understanding—
of men who at one moment are soaring high in the clear
blue of religious thought, and in the next are wallowing
in the filthy mud of idolatrous ceremony.

That is India all over. It tolerates everything. It
looks upon human frailty with the kindliest of eyes.
Its moments of purifying devotion obliterate its years
of debasing exercises. Moreover, it cleanses itself with
its humour. It does not believe its own extravagances.
It comes to love its gods as one loves a family heirloom.
We saw the feast of maternity when the mother goddess,
after having dw r elt in houses for some days, is borne
with bands in procession to be thrown into the Ganges.
When she goes, we were told, the hearts of the women
are empty as when a child dies. They crowd the door-
ways and balconies to see her taken away, and they
weep at her going.

“ And is it all real ? ” I asked. “ Yes and no ” was
the reply of an English friend who has lived long
amongst the people. “ The mother has twined herself
round my own heart. She was very ugly when I saw
her first, but I now think her beautiful. India knows,
and yet she does not know. She is content to worship.”
She follows her quest for the Eternal — of whom the
things of life are but the shadow and the thought —
through the most sordid paths, through nauseating filth
and appalling error, and yet upon her shrines, in an
extraordinary degree, shines the light of pure devotion
and absolute abandonment.

Truly, Benares, the Holy City, holds in its keeping
the soul of India.

THE GENIUS OE BENGAL

)N the outskirts, tall chu* 1 J^t ^the strLtsare choked
•he river is crowded with craft the^ ^ prosperity

tvith traffic. Proud menco t ^tension to explain
to lay before you, with ^ ments with which to

to you, with pr°]eets of imi asking myself

entice you. Tte-s a n^ world. ^ t s

constantly : Ami smin . g o{ a ne w kind,

impressions both on p ™ t mo Sffiere. Here there is life
I am breathing a new atmosi ^

and aggressive effort This is Ben winds have

From the moment I set foot m , Be ware

Mde ; the spc11

° f The h Babu is very j.^ehSlhsorb'ed Western know-
For the Babu is clever, he he b d d d subordinate,
ledge, he is discontented as a degr< ^ He . g

and he is coiisequently impe ^ ^ honour> to b a

said to be corrupt, to h ^ of Macaulay. The

coward. He lias irJa^ , , Britisher in Calcutta is
golf between the “f ® "t experie”« told “

deep and wide, and officis 1 f g P fc it is like ly to

it was not hemg filled up. i ao n

be, and the reason is not far natio ualist move-

The Bengali inspires tb ® . is a Liberal politician:

ment. In Bombay, the nata nestis aL, ^
a reformer is a jU unimaginativ,

SSu2 'who 1 ^ a

^£» h ^d a &»m 4ds ex

THE GENIUS OF BENGAL

pression not only in politics but in every form of activity.
Consequently, Bengal politics are too volatile, too
philosophical, too nervous. There are no good political
leaders there. There are excellent speakers and eloquent
writers, but none of the prominent men seem to have
that heaven-given capacity to lead. They can prepare
men to be led, but no shepherd then steps forward to
pipe the flocks to the green pastures. If Bengal could
unite leaders and agitators the system of our rule in
India would change as by magic.

But Bengal is perhaps doing better than making
political parties. It is idealising India. It is translating
nationalism into religion, into music and poetry, into
painting and literature. I called on one whose name
is on every lip as a wild extremist who toys with bombs
and across whose path the shadow* of the hangman
falls. He sat under a printed text, “ I will go on in the
strength of the Lord God ” ; he talked of the things
which trouble the soul of man ; he w r andered aimlessly
into the dim regions of aspiration where the mind finds
a soothing resting-place. He was far more of a mystic
than of a politician. He saw India seated on a temple
throne. But how it was to arise, what the next step
was to be, what the morrow of independence was to
bring — to these things he had given little thought.
They were not of the nature of his genius.

Another w*hom I visited in an old crumbling place
of many rooms where a joint family dwelt in ancient
style began by blessing me in the name of his gods, by
telling me about his brother who had withdrawn from
the world and who is in sorrow because the plaintive
voice of India will intrude upon his meditations, and
by informing me about their common family worship.
I asked for books and pamphlets published by him,
and he brought me the lives of saints and meditations
on the Infinite. He told me that he longed to leave the
things that are seen and distract, and plunge into that
ocean of contemplation where men here seek to find
obliviph. He edits one of the most detested Bengal

THE GENIUS OF BENGAL

papers. From Bengal gush innumerable freshets of
religions all going to revive and invigorate the nationalist
spirit.

A literary revival makes for the same end. It is
still crude, particularly in its romance, but it is groping
after Hindu realism. It is written in Bengali in the same
aggressive way that some of our Irish friends are trying
to revive the use of Erse. It is not so good as the Bengali
literature of last generation, when Bankim Chandra
Chatterji was writing his Anandamath and Taraknath
Ganguli his Svarnalata. But its intention and spirit
are quite clear.

So also in music, poetry, and the fine arts. The last,
glowing with nationalist spirit, has been revived by
Tagore and some of his pupils. Music and poetry
already enjoy a vigorous popular life. They brought
us out on the river on Sunday and sang to us — “ Bande
Mataram ” amongst other things. Their “ Marseillaise ”
and their “ Carmagnole ” are hymns thanking God for
endowing life with beauty, are invocations to India their
Mother full of yearning endearments. They sang from
well-thumbed copies of a collection of hymns written
by Tagore the poet, and the music, much of it new and
all so unlike our own, clung round our hearts and stole
again and again all that day into our ears.

When we were still in the North-West we were told
of this incident. A concert was held one evening at
One of the orphan schools controlled by a Missionary
Society, the boys themselves doing the entertaining.
The Punjabis sang their rather monotonous and rather
common popular songs, but one lad singing in an un-
known* tongue swept every one off his legs by the vim
of his style and the enchantment of his music. He had
been picked up on the Calcutta streets and he was singing
some of the Bengali national hymns.

That is what Bengal is doing for the national move-
ment. It is creating India by song and worship, it is
clothing her in queenly garments. Its politics must
be for some time an uncertain mingling of extremist

THE GENIUS OF BENGAL

impossibilism and moderate opportunism — of religious
yearning and artistic idealism. Bengal will be romantic
while the Punjab is dogmatic and Bombay diplomatic,
Whether it be true or not, it is a most likely thing that
the political dacoits of Bengal took their inspiration and
guidance from the Anandmnath with its heroic Children
lodging in dark woods and marshalled to fight by monk-
ish warriors. That is so like Bengal and the Bengali.
Bengal will nurture for long the bereavement to its heart
caused by the Partition ; it will cling fondly to Swadeshi ;
on the shores of its enthusiasm it will throw up the bomb-
thrower as a troubled sea throws up foam, and from it
all will come India — if India ever does come.

I sat at the table of the great official, and in bad
temper and rude manner he demanded of me to tell him
where I had been, whom I had seen, and of what I was
thinking. I told him of the hymns and the pictures
and the prayers. And he laughed a great rude Western
laugh and explained everything in blind positive
Western superficialities. He knew nothing about the
pictures ; the hymns were a mixture of double meaning
and sedition; he had no inner appreciation of the
prayers. Each sentence ended with the authoritative
I know. But I had heard the children sing and the
women talk, and the men join in with both. And I think
I know.

THE WOMEN OF INDIA 1

iLlTtoafth! irT 0f , the P° liticaI situation in

India is that the British are aliens, with different idesk
different thoughts, different customs from those owr
“7 "}>'■ the officials told me, , fc, wSe

A 0 u ,ng ’ that ■“> ■ could really kn™

?X5V ab ° Ut tj ^ e country after a stay of a few weeks

wWh t0 agree Wlth them most sincerely, and then ask
whether they considered that they with their wS

SSSSfSffj* 1 ®* the *' TO domieMt

thei «Wk. ° f the Inc ^ lans their religion and

Sr gt

• Z history and the varieties of religious beliefs

But dt5\f ha M a i7 °i tIle Indians themselves have
stand d th?^ Mu er \ d °r an > r English student, under-
stand the way m which the worship of a particular
god or goddess, or the holding of a partieukr S

a°Weten tulcr S' daily of th » Hindus ? Can

^^ss^SwBr? rf “ 0ri “ te ' “ d *“

is SSff.vny?’ eTe ” s “PaMaI knowledge

theorthodov TTi a r £ S ? perSOn of the male s ^, for
me orthodox Hindu or Mohammedan Iadv who is above

worl C d 0 Md“o EtS herSelf sectaded h ° m °“«e

face to f ar .r» v F can mee t her or speak to her

face to face. Yet I think it is no exaggeration to

that religion and marriage, the two side? of' life in which

such a gulf is fixed between West and East, have even

*> X rssx ” ife - wh » « * h *

THE WOMEN OF INDIA 53

more absorbing and universal influence upon the lives
of the Indians than upon those of our own people at
home.

Whilst impossible for the English man, it is very
difficult for the English woman to enter into the lives
of her sisters behind the Purdah, or veil. One need not
be a suffragette to find it hard to imagine living through
year after year of seclusion in a zenana, seeing no sights
beyond the walls of one’s own apartments or garden,
meeting no male person except the men of one’s imme-
diate household (sometimes even older brothers-in-law
are excluded). But this is the fate of many women
who nevertheless are powers in the land and who deserve
the title of “ strong-minded ” ladies.

In the most old-fashioned of all the Native States of
India, that of Udaipur, the Maharani is invisible to
ladies of English tongue. Her name can never be men-
tioned in conversation with her husband or her son ;
it would be an insult to ask them directly after her
health. There is a story that once, when she had a bad
ear, she allowed an English lady doctor to examine the
ear alone, which was put through a hole in a screening
veil. But sometimes when the Maharana has seemed
to be persuaded to some improvement in his rule, a
deadlock suddenly arises. He will not move any farther
in the desired direction, and gives no reason for his
change, but his British advisers suspect — they cannot
know — that the Maharani has put her foot down and
that she is the obstacle, an obstacle hopeless for them to
reach.

In how many other cases may it not be the woman’s
influence which baffles our officials and turns their plans
to naught— an influence of which they are necessarily
ignorant and which is correspondingly strong and
subtle ?

There are well-known instances in India of women
who have ruled in their own right, and done it with
sagacity and success. We stood in the old fort at
Jhansi, and saw where the Rani had concentrated her

THE WOMEN OF INDIA

forces at the time of the Mutiny, where she had defied
us and made a mock of our power, and where finally
she had been driven out to die fighting against us in the
hills. It was only for seventeen days that she threw off
our yoke, $>ut if there had been a few more Indians with
her spirit in those anxious times, the British would not
now have been masters of India.

Other women have power during the minorities of
their sons, and keep this power after the sons have grown
up. I had the pleasure of talking with the mother and
wife of the Maharajah of Gwalior, one of the most
enterprising and Europeanised of the Indian princes.
We were invited to the Palace for the birthday party
of the Dowager Maharani, and joined the Indian men
and the British men and women who were her guests
at games and conversation in the garden.

The royal ladies and their attendants only shared
in the festivities by watching them through the screened
windows of their apartments, but afterwards the lady
guests went indoors and spoke to their Highnesses,
whilst one or two specially favoured gentlemen were
allowed to talk to them through the hanging screens.
The Dowager herself held the reins of government whilst
her son was young, and is quite capable now of giving
him advice, and taking his place when he is away from
home, whilst his wife, I understand, has charge of some
of his finances as her daily share of responsibility.
There is a shadow over the lives of this young couple.
Married whilst still a child herself, the wife has no
children. She is now well on in the twenties, but is
small and fragile-looking, as if she were a child still.
By all the laws of heirship and of religion the Maharajah
ought to marry a second wife to secure an heir. Will he
give way to custom and convenience and perchance
break the heart of his first love, or will he hold to the
Western ideal and keep himself only unto her ? Winch
way does the Dowager’s influence draw him ? Such
are the problems which occur in the East and from which
we are free.

THE WOMEN OF INDIA 55

I had a glimpse of another royal tragedy in a visit
I paid at Baroda to the widow of the Gaekwar’s eldest
son. The princess w r as at her lessons when I called, and
came from them to talk to me and to show me her
children. She is only eighteen now (1909) ; she has two
little girls ; and her youngest baby, the prince, now
about one year and a half old, was bom only a few
weeks before his father’s death. This is the princess
to secure whom a Committee was appointed when the
prince came to a marriageable age. The Committee was
romantic enough to send up several names for the prince’s
approval, so that he had some choice in the matter.
The widowed princess has her mother and grandmother
living with her, and an English nurse, who shares with
her the charge of the children. The young girl, for she
is no more, is wisely devoting four hours a day to study,
two hours of which are given to English, for education
is decidedly hampered when one is the mother of three
children at an age when European young ladies are still
at school.

The princess looked sweetly pretty in her white
widow’s robes, and she was gentle and courteous and
smiling. By the death of her husband she is condemned
to perpetual seclusion and quietude ; the joys of life
are forfeited by widows however early in the springtime
of their life the blow may fall. Princess Padmavadi has
her children to live for, but many girls are widows before
they have been wives. I heard on excellent Indian
authority of a marriage ceremony which had actually
been gone through before the birth of the contracting
parties, who were represented by balls of flowers. One
of the mothers remarked when she was being warned
of possible disaster which might follow a marriage she
was planning for a little girl of five years old : “ My
baby might have been born a widow,”

The stepmother of this widowed princess is one of
the most Europeanised of Indian princesses. She travels
in Europe with the Gaekwar without any shade of
Purdah, and is well known in high English society. la

THE WOMEN OP INDIA

Bombay she also goes about freely, but in her own State
she does not quite give up the old ways, and retires
behind a modified Purdah as long as she is in Baroda.
The Maharani of Burdwan, on the other side of India
(whose title does not, however, carry a kingdom with it),
has emerged from Purdah with the active approval of
her husband during the last year or two, and this lady,
who until a few months ago had never gone into mixed
company or been seen by men outside her own family
circle, is now subjected to the infliction of having to
make speeches at the opening of bazaars. Surely she
must recognise that there are at any rate some penances
in life from which Purdah saves its devotees.

Many other tales I heard of this seclusion. One high
official’s wife told me of a lady who was carried right
into her drawing-room in a gilded jewelled palanquin,
and stepped out from it quite overcome with fright and
shyness. It was the first time she had ever been outside
the grounds of her own house. Another lady of the ruling
caste told me how she had visited amongst some Ranis
in an out-of-the-way district, where education and
modem civilisation were unknown, and found there a
girl with a good English education, keen on reading,
ready to talk on all the topics of the day, but who had
been married to a son of this backward family. The poor
girl was as unhappy and stifled in her uncongenial sur-
roundings as a fish out of water, and hailed the visit
of an Englishwoman as a ray of light in the darkness.

Then there was the old Begum, peace be to her ashes,
who was strictest of the strict in her observance of
Purdah and retirement, yet sufficiently closely related
to our Mother Eve to yield to the offer of an English
lady friend to take her out driving in disguise so that she
might see the world unhampered by the shutters and
curtains of her palanquin.

Our own customs with regard to ladies naturally
:ax& looked at very much askance. Our dances where
men, and women, often strangers to each other, revolve
-shock' Indian women, and the unpleasant'

THE WOMEN OF INDIA

impression is not lessened by the low necks of the ladies’
dresses. A Viceroy’s wife who wanted to raise the
dignity of English womanhood in the eyes of the Indians
would do well^to pass a sumptuary law with regard to
the amount of clothing that the ladies attending her
Court should wear, and also perhaps as to the kind of
private theatricals in which young maidens should
take part.

So far I have given instances of the life of ladies of
high rank, but they are typical of all.

Endless varieties of etiquette exist. One caste and
one family may do things which to another caste or
family would be anathema. In visiting zenanas I had
to speak very warily and put my questions with a con-
siderable amount of hesitation, for whilst in some places,
for instance, I found it quite correct for the ladies of
the house to play or sing for my entertainment, in other
houses a round-about suggestion that the ladies might
take some interest in such pastimes would evidently
have been a deadly insult had I not been an ignorant
foreigner and barbarian. “ I am ashamed to ask my
mother that,” said one boy to me apologetically when
he was acting as interpreter between me and his step-
mother and numerous sisters and sisters-in-law ; whilst
in another house the hint roused a most lively inter-
change of jokes between the hostess and the ladies
invited to meet me, which the interpreter, an elderly
woman attendant, avoided translating to me.

But through all, certain common features are found :
marriage before girlhood is passed ; consequent seclusion
from the outside world, the husband and’ the immediate
family forming the horizon of the thoughts and plans
of each day ; knowledge of our outer world gained only
at second-hand, or by peeping through corners and
crevices ; the blank lives of the widows ; and in some
cases the growing desire for emancipation and for a
freedom more like that of which they have examples
always before them in the womenfolk of the British
Raj.

THE WOMEN OP INDIA

®OBQbay she also goes about freely, but in her own State
b V' ° es no ^ finite §* ve U P ways, and retires

Th ^ a mo d*fied Purdah as long as she is in Baroda.

, £ Maharani of Burdwan, on the other side of India
twnose title does not, however, carry a kingdom with it),
uas emerged from Purdah with the active approval of
.If husband during the last year or two, and this lady,
wno until a few months ago had never gone into mixed
company or been seen by men outside her own family
circle, i s now subjected to the infliction of having to
make speeches at the opening of bazaars. Surely she
P u ?j; recognise that there are at any rate some penances
m life from which Purdah saves its devotees.

■Many other tales I heard of this seclusion. One high
official's wife told me of a lady who was carried right
mt ° ^ er drawing-room in a gilded jewelled palanquin,
and stepped out from it quite overcome with fright and
shyness. It was the first time she had ever been outside
the grounds of her own house. Another lady of the ruling
caste told me how she had visited amongst some Ranis
m an out-of-the-way district, where education and
modern civilisation were unknown, and found there a
girl with a good English education, keen on reading,
ready to talk on all the topics of the day, but who had
been married to a son of this backward family. The poor
girl was as unhappy and stifled in her uncongenial sur-
roundings as a fish out of water, and hailed the visit
of an Englishwoman as a ray of light in the darkness.

Our own customs with regard to ladies naturally
are looked at very much askance. Our dances where
men and women, often strangers to each other, revolve
in pairs, shock Indian women, and the unpleasant

THE WOMEN OF INDIA

d^.!f 10ri A iS 'fr t Iess f nedb y the iow necks of the ladies'
dresses. A Viceroys wife who wanted to raise the

Sld^o S n if h t Sh wommhood in ^ eyes of the Indians
would do welUo pass a sumptuary law with regard to

Cour?T Un i i C ° thing that the ]adi « attending her
ourt should wear, and also perhaps as to the kind of

£krpart heatriCalS “ Which youn 2 maid ens should

hi<fh°r?nl ^ h^th iVen i f tanc , es of the m e of ladies of
‘t? j, but . i;be y are typical of all.

°I? tiquette exist. One caste and

tamit ZnnlTt? d ° ^ mgS Which to another caste or

to sneak vert a .f &tbe ™ a - In visiting zenanas I had
to speak very warily and put my questions with a cnn

teS“anc“T t o?„ dlfS ^ “ l° me Phces >

?»r

" sul *f stion «“* the ladies might
have SrSy taSa P dTS,t S , W ° Uld

he .. Sg alt tKS tT-

S?SSSSrP^^

i££5¥

marriage before ghlWiLT s m d 10n features are fo ™d :

from the outside worid^ P n i d 5 ? sequent seclusion
family

of each day • knowledge Z? f , thou S hts and plans

at seconded Slf gained^nly

crevices; the blank through corners and

cases th; grow deJ- ? * ’• and in Some

freedom more like that o/ whicT^he^have^ 5 3
always before them in the ^^TSSSS

THE WOMEN OF INDIA

( Continued )

I might almost sum up the position of women in India
by saying that it is a country without young girls.
One simply pines to see an English maiden in her early
teens, for the curse upon the British Raj is that for
reasons of health parents cannot keep their children
with them, after they are a few years old, until they are
full grown and ready to move in society.

I remember in a dingy station how my heart gave
a glad leap because I saw an English skirt approaching
in the distance which was a foot or two above the ground
and so proved that its wearer was still not grown up,
and when the girl came near it was a joy simply to sit
and look at her, though in England I pass every day
dozens of maidens of the same age who are more attrac-
tive-looking.

Amongst the Indians I certainly saw many most
charming girls in their teens. Some come back to my
memory whom I met in various zenanas, and who were
radiantly and delicately beautiful in their coloured
silks and dainty jewels. But one had to remember that
they were married women, perhaps mothers of families,
with the responsibilities of life already settled for them.
The poetry of maidenhood is absent ; the child is trans-
formed into the wife without those precious years of
waiting and growth when the princely knight is still
in the future and the romance of life is still ethereal
and delightful in its uncertainty.

Amongst the poorer classes it is just the same. In
the villages dear little dark-eyed girls run up to one
and smile, and one’s experienced guide announces that

THE WOMEN OF INDIA

they are matrons because they are wearing bracelets
above their elbows. Or in the jute or cotton mills one
sees little girls whom one almost suspects of being under
even the low age (nine years) at which children may
work in mills in India, and one is told that the red paint
along the parting of the black hair is the sign that they
are married. I asked an Indian lady doctor one day
whether there were fewer child-mothers now than
formerly, and she told me that she had attended one
mother of fifteen that day and one of fourteen the day
before. The physical results of such motherhood have
been attested as bad by quite indisputable medical
evidence. In 1890, after the tragic death of the
child-wife Pulmani Dasi, a memorial against child-
marriage signed by fifty-five lady doctors in India was
presented to the Government. Its cramping effects,
mentally and morally, are acknowledged as evil by the
most earnest of Indian reformers.

Upon this the questions naturally arise — -In what
direction are reformers in India working to change these
customs which they recognise as evil, and what progress;
are they making ? We have all heard how the British
Government abolished Sati, or the burning of the
widow with the husband’s dead body. This was in 1829,
and a petition was presented to the Privy Council
against the abolition, which was signed by 18,000
Indians, including members of the best Calcutta families.

I suppose now it would be difficult to get one signature
in favour of its restitution.

But there are complaints not altogether without
justification that the zeal for social improvement which
led progressive Indians and English to work together
for such reforms as the abolition of Sati, the prohibition
of infanticide, the raising of the age of consent, and the
Widow Remarriage Act, has waned, and that advanced
thinkers espouse political agitation and neglect social
reform.

It is pointed out that “ cold Sati,” the cutting off
of the widows from all social pleasures and independence

60 THE WOMEN OF INDIA

is a mere lingering cruelty 'than burning alive, and
charges are made against Indian reformers who marry
children themselves or who refuse to countenance any
departure from tradition in the case of even the youngest
widows in their own family. On the other hand, we
must recognise that it is hard to fight against the de-
crees of caste which have all the force of social custom
backed up by the religion of generations.

Quotations are given from the old sacred books to
show that child-marriage is a comparatively recent
innovation. Many indeed say that this and the .zenana'
system came into force amongst the Hindus as a pro-
tection for. their girls and women against the Moham-
medan invaders. A parallel to this may be found in
recent years in the Chenab Colony, one of the Punjab
deserts so wonderfully turned into fruitful land by a
system of canals. In the times when the land was desert
the Janglis, the old grazier population somewhat like
our gipsies, used to marry their men at thirty to thirty-
five years, the women at twenty-five to thirty. They
said they were unwilling to yield their independence
too young. As soon as the land became fertile, colonists
from other parts of India were drafted in and soon
outnumbered the Janglis. Now these latter marry their
girls at twelve to fourteen years of age, and the reason
given is their general distrust of their immigrant neigh-
bours : u Now no one can be relied upon.”

The Indian reformer nowadays who swears that he will
not marry afchild-wife finds it difficult to meet with any
young maiden of more mature years still unwed, and if
he proposes to marry a widow, though this is legal in
the eyes of British officials, it cuts both the bridegroom
and bride off from their families, end consequently
upsets their whole status both in society and in their
religious life. Yet there certainly is -a. gradual move-
ment towards later marriages and , more ; equality,
between "the ■ sexes, and this is chiefly helped., by the.,
spread' of education amongst girls ,and; women, as well ,
as amongst boys and men.

THE WOMEN OF INDIA

Though the lead in female education was taken by
Christians (the first day school for girls being started
in 1807 by Mrs. Hannah Marshman, a missionary), the
Parsees were not far behind, and the late Miss Clarke,
daughter of the present Governor of Bombay, helped
this community to celebrate by historical tableaux
the jubilee, two or three years ago, of its first attempts
at systematic female education. Now, advanced schools
for ghls are springing up under the Arya Somaj and the
Brahmo Somaj, and even the Mohammedans are coming
into line. At Aligahr, the seat of their celebrated boys’
school and college, I found one girls’ school established
and another being talked of. Most of the secondary
schools for girls have to include a great deal of primary
education. Indeed, in the whole of India, in 1909,
excluding European schools, there were only 1208 girls
in the higher stage of secondary schools, out of a total
of 560,261 under instruction, and 563 of these were in
Bombay.

The number of girls in primary schools is 545,091,
as compared with 348,510 in 1902. Many of these
little girls go to the boys’ schools and learn with their
brothers, but it is usually much easier to get them to
attend separate girls’ schools, and even in country
districts the number of these is being increased. In one
village we visited we heard there was a girls’ school,
and after a great hunt v T e found it in a side street. It
turned out to be a small dark room with about half a
dozen little girls sitting round on the floor with slates
and readers, listening to a pleasant-looking widow who
was teaching them. 'bfy-;bV>byyv;.;yy;;y:. : .;

But though there are signs of advance, what is being
done so far is but a drop in the bucket. In Bombay
there is 5'9 per cent of girls in school for every hundred
of school-going age ; in Madras 5-7 ; in Bengal 3‘2 ;
in the United Provinces only 1.2. Three or four girls
receiving education out of every hundred is not much
to be proud of, especially when we know that most of
these, largely owing to the early age of marriage, only

62 . THE WOMEN OF INDIA

attain a smattering of reading and writing and ex-
ceedingly elementary knowledge. The obstacle now in
the way is not so much in the opposition of the people
themselves. In the zenanas they are crying out for
learning. I shall never forget the eager hungry look
of a Mohammedan girl, dressed up in silks and jewels,
whose mother told me she had some teachers in for her,
but there was no school within reach to which to send
her. Her brother interpreted to me that his sister had
been “ very, very much -wanting to see you,” and I felt
it pathetic that a few minutes’ glimpse of a visitor from
the outside world from which she was cut off should
be such a red-letter day in her life. In a most interesting
Purdah school in Lahore, to which the young ladies are
fetched in closed carriages, and whose garden walls are
highly fenced to prevent any stray male eye from pene-
trating within, I was told of one pupil who, unlike most
Indian girls, was slow at her books. She seemed hope-
lessly stupid, and kept the others back so much that her
teacher at last said she had better not come to school
But the poor girl wept so bitterly, and explained in such
a heartbroken way that she was betrothed to a boy
who was receiving English education, and she feared
he would despise her and perhaps cast her off if she
knew nothing of what he was interested in, that the
teacher relented and took her back. As a proof of in-
dustry, the poor girl was trying to learn a page of a
Royal Reader by heart. I am not sure whether she
meant to edify her fiancd and brighten his domestic
hearth by repeating it to him and so making English
conversation when he returned.

It is not without significance that in two of the best-
known modern Indian novels, Anandamath, by Bankim
Chandra Chatterji, and the Indian Inner Home, by Babu
Taraknath Ganguli, the heroines, Santi and Svarnalata
respectively, are both represented as being educated,
as the result of special circumstances, with boys, and
that their possession of learning which most young
women have not got is made to contribute to their

THE WOMEN OF INDIA' 63

charms and virtues. Santi indeed leaves the shelter
of het home and becomes the companion of her husband
m his “ hero’s mission ” as soldier and patriot in the
band of the ChildTen. ” He is Ch0a§i?d:iA'a.:; pious vyprh^
and I have come to share it with him,” she says, and
when their mission is accomplished they wander forth
together as ascetics to visit the shrines.

When Svarnalata’s father finds her with inky fingers
and face, he exclaims, “You are learning to write!
uhat good will that do you ? ” Her brother, who has
been teaching her in his own holidays, defends her, and
the father acquiesces gently, “ I see my Lakshmi [the
goddess of domestic peace and prosperity] is a Saras-
wati [the goddess of learning] as well.”

I he ideal of modern Indian women is more and
more to be Saraswati as well as Lakshmi, though the
prejudices and difficulties to be overcome are almost
inconceivable to our Western minds.

Ihe demand for wider education exists, but the
obstacles are twofold. The first is the expense. Our
Government can spend over twenty millions per annum
on the Army, but only two millions out of public funds
on education. This difficulty applies to education both
r 10 vs and girls; but the second one is special for
girls— namely, the difficulty of getting women teachers,
ihe division between the sexes makes men teachers
impossible m most places, but the women marry so early
that they have no time to train for teaching. Here
again, we have to get rid of our English ideas before

7m- wi PPr ° aCh the In ?- an problem - As the material
£‘ ea f® we mu& , t ttonk of girls who leave school
btforn they are m their teens, or, at any rate, whilst
m their early teens, in order to get married, and who

In tSTT ate P ur< l ah oashin,” kept behind the
If f /, ® et women teachers the customs of ages have

extent J1 or Thp 0 ]^ 1 ’ &S ^ tJie ease to a sIow ty increasing
extent, oi the Government must fall back upon the

widows and confer a double benefit by giving "hem

status and interesting work and finding woiSen teachers

04 THE WOMEN OF INDIA

for the zenanas and the girls’ schools. The Hindus
themselves have started some very interesting widows’
homes, where some of the widows are given book-
learning, whilst others concentrate more upon needle-
work and other hand industries. Training uneducated
widows, however, is not so easy as training girls straight
from school, and hence the progress is slow and the
standard of teaching still very low.

But I believe that national pride will make a way in
spite of difficulties. I do not want the Indian women
to be turned into replicas of the English ones. I want
them to develop along their own lines, and this, I believe,
they are preparing to do. I have visited women’s clubs,
managed by Indian women. I have read women’s
papers and magazines edited by Indian women. I have
talked with Indian lady doctors and with a Parsee lady
lawyer who is recognised in India as no lady lawyer is
as yet in England. An Indian lady once mentioned to
me casually in the course of conversation that she was
on the voters’ roll, and on inquiry I have found that
there are 527 Hindus, 260 Mohammedans, 458 Parsees,
seventy-three Europeans and others entered as women
voters (wives, widows and spinsters) on the burgess roll
of Bombay. Consequently Indian women have already
got the municipal vote “ on the same terms as it is
granted to men,” and in the ease of those members of
the new Legislative Councils who are elected by munici-
palities, the indirect vote of “ Mithabai, wife of Tulsidas
Surji,” counts for as much as that of Tulsidas Surji
himself.

But these symptoms of advance on Western lines
are of little importance compared with the uprising
which is going on behind the Purdahs and which is
hidden from our Anglo-Indian officials. It is to the
women that the strength of the Swadeshi movement,
the patronising of Indian-made goods and the further
attempt to boycott English goods are due. It is the
women who resent more keenly than the men the slights
constantly put upon the natives of the country by its

THE WOMEN OF INDIA 65

ill-mannered British invaders. It was enthusiasm for
Mr. Tilak as a champion of Indian nationality which
made the ladies of Bombay hold a crowded public
meeting of protest.

It is sheer blindness to overlook the women’s influence
as a factor in the unrest now troubling the Government
in India. How to enlist that influence and to induce
the women of the country to co-operate with us in its
progress and good government is a problem which, if
it is to be satisfactorily solved, will need patience,
effort, money, and, above all, sympathetic imagination
and a power of looking at things from the point of view
of other people.

PART III

OPINIONS

■ 7 \ ■ I / '7 . ■ " :

INDIA

I have written of India ; but before one has been here
a week, one doubts if India exists. The sightseer, with
wonder in his eyes, hastens to the Bombay bazaars.
He stands perhaps at the comer where the silversmiths
work opposite to the coppersmiths, and where the gilded
Jain temple is so conspicuous a feature in the street
architecture. Past him pour, as though ranked in a
pageant, tribes, races, creeds, castes, all distinctively
marked by dress, hair, carriage, face, religious symbols
borne on the forehead — each one standing out from the
other. The ear may not have been trained yet to the
varieties of language, but if it were, it would hear a
multitude of tongues, and those using them understand
each other as little as the English onlooker understands
any one of them. There are 147 of these languages in
use in India, and they are so diverse that they belong
to six great families of human speech. 60,000,000
speak Hindi, 44,500,000 Bengali, 37,000,000 Bihari,
18,000,000 Marathi, 10,000,000 Guzerati, and so on.
This is but an epitome of the land itself.

Two great religions divide its people — Hinduism
with 207,000,000 adherents, Mohammedanism with
62,500,000 ; and this religious difference indicates to
a great extent different historical origins, conflicting
national ideals, and disrupting social sentiments.
Within these two camps there are further divisions.
The Mohammedan Sunni is in conflict with his brother
Shiah. It is only over a matter as to whether a caliph
or two were false or true ; but caliphs are exceedingly
important personages amongst the Faithful. Though
these Mohammedan divisions result occasionally in
civil rivalry and discord they are not such as to destroy

INDIA 67

' religious unity. That is not exactly the case with the
Hindu carrn whe re divdsioBs^of„caste mean so much"
that they not only 'separate the people, but condemn
^e^urt Fi’orhfie total llin diPTn^^ life ’ little

rcmo vcrf from THaF'*6f'~flT e~l)^st y that perish ! The
Sudra is not even to receive religious instruction or to
take part in religious observance ; the penance required
for killing him, according to the Laws of Manu, is the
same as that required for killing a cat, or a frog, or a
crow. He is less sacred than a cow. Nationality can
t exist in spite of many differences of race and religion,
but only on condition that in the mind of the citizen
there is some sense of oneness which transcends all
sense of separation and difference. The Indian caste
system, expressing as it does not merely a social dis-
tinction, but a religious repulsion of the clean against
the unclean, and involving the existence of an outcast
class of millions whose very shadows taint the sacred
ones, seems to be quite inconsistent with a national
Unity. A ruling caste, retaining power by force or fraud,
holding authority over the masses without consulting
them, oppressing them without compunction, and treat-
ing them at best as mere means to its own ends, appears
to be the political system which alone corresponds to the
religion of Hinduism.

£The further one wanders on this road of inquiry the
'■ greater appear the difficulties aheadj^ History adds to
; the confusion. The people have no history in common
■ in which they take pride. The population are like layers
* on the land. They came in wave after wave, always

f driving eastwards and southwards, the original Dravi-

i dians, like our own ancient peoples, being pushed far
fro in l he points at which the invaders entered, the
various Aryan invasions spending themselves and leaving
their traces in different territories. A language map of
| modern India is a most striking object-lesson in these
repeated invasions. The Mahratta, with his inheritance
of conquest still fresh in his memory— for it is only a
5 hundred years sifice his princes ruled and appeared

68 INDIA

to be in a fair way to become the masters of India —
broods resentfully over the past, and nu r ses i n his heart
a pride of r ace, and caste which is nourished by the
feeling that he belongs to the highest of the Brahmins
as well as to the last of the conquerors; the Rajput,
with his chivalrous military spirit and contempt for
the educated Hindu political agitator, boasts a purity of
blood running clear since an early Aryan emigration
across the Himalayas ; the Bengali is literary, of nimble
mind, sensitive, harbouring resentment, nationalist to
the core. These are some of the types which history
has made for our confusion. Then on the north-west
we meet with the last invader next to ourselves— the
Mohammedan, whose children still live in the Middle
Ages, who cares nothing about India, whose notion of
social unity may be Pan-Islamism, or if not that, is
nothing at all, who has no part in the political agitations
bred of Western thought and education, and who is as
ready as his forebears were to pour south and east with
a rifle on his back and a horse under him, fighting and
picking up victuals on the way. To this diversity it is un-
necessary to add the Mongolian races which are found on
the northern borders, and which one sees in the streets of
Simla and Darjeeling and in the terraced fields of Nepaul,
and the totally uncivilised men of the bush and the hills.

Then there is the important political fact that 693
Native States exist over an area of 679,393 square
miles against a British area of 1,087,000 square miles,
and with a population of 62,500,000 souls.

Can these be united in one nation ? When the
Mahratta Brahmin and the Bengali Babu cry together
for a nationalist movement, does each only seek for the
dominance of his own kind ? Has he deluded himself
so that “ India” in his mouth means himself and his
own caste ? Has he honestly faced what the morrow
of India’s independence is to bring ?

point, too, history is unmerciful; The story
of India is but a series of kaleidoscopic changes, in which
the popular notion that the Mohammedans conquered

INDIA 69

the country for good is seen to be as little in accord with
truth as that the Mahrattas were gaining real control
when the English appeared on the scene and General
Lake with guns and sepoys ended the rule of the Pesh-
was. Would there be permanence now any more than
there was permanence then ? Would the retreat of
the English invader be anything more than the signal
for another to appear, and would not the end of one
regime of subjection be but the opening of another ?

Far away back in the heroic ages there was an India.
Learning and art flourished within its borders. Its
commerce flowed wherever markets then were. Its
science explored nearly as far in the jungles of creation
as our own. Its philosophy penetrated deep into the
mystery of experience and aspiration. “ Bring me one
of the teachers of India,” said Alexander’s master,
Plato, when told that his youthful pupil planned cam-
paigns across the Himalayas. But that India has
vanished. There is a glimpse of it in the Mahabharata
and the Ramayana ; vestiges of it are found in the
remnants of the scientific literature that survived the
furies of raid and conquest ; traces of it are met with in
the literature of other people. The Nationalist move-
ment of to-day is trying to revive it as an inspiring
memory, but it is very, very far off, and the recollection
of it in the race is dim.

Finally, this discovery comes after one has gone a
little beneath the surface of Indian life. The civilisation
and the genius of India are now patched by the alien
civilisation and genius of the West. The political
problem of India, for instance, is not that of an Oriental
people, but of an Oriental people whose leaders are
imbued with Western education and are trying to
assimilate its culture. From this comes confusion.

At first sight, and on the surface, India appears to
be a land where people live side by side but do not form
a national community. The hope of a united India,
an India conscious of a national unity of purpose and
destiny, seems to be the vainest of vain dreams.

THE WAYS 03? THE “ NATIVE

The visitor to India, particularly if he shows signs ol
consulting Indian opinion, is reminded at every turn
that the Hindu has many vices. The whole population
is presented to him as being heathen, whereas there is,
perhaps, no more highly civilised people in the world.
They may lack in force of will, but they certainly do not
lack in civilisation. But at the head of their worst
children is the Babu, the educated or semi-edueated
Hindu. The Babu is the devil incarnate. He has a
nimble mind and no conscience ; he is as crooked as sin,
and in his hands simple-minded Westerns like myself
are as clay under the moulding thumb of the potter.
He is, in addition, a mean-spirited coward, who sneaks
through life doing mischief because he loves it. In fact,
no one can do justice to the Babu except an Anglo-
Indian of at least thirty years’ standing. That is what
the stranger is told by his kith and kin.

I met this Babu. He has, indeed, the characteristics
of all subject peoples that have been maligned with one
accord. I have also met his detractors. They, too,
have the characteristics of all ruling castes tvhose
opinions have hardly been challenged. Both the Babu
and the Babu’s detractors would be none the worse
of some fresh air, and both require a fresh mind to deal
impartially with them.

The defects of the Indian are patent. Some of them
are his own, others are ours.( He has always been prone
to sell justice,} When he is in a position to exact bribes
and gifts he does not miss his chance. The canal and
dirigatiph service , 1 the prettier public works, the per-

1 This service suffers greatly. I was told of an Indian Colonel who
in conversation with the officer of his iistrict admitted that be paid
bribes to the canal officials. He was told he must stop doing so, and

THE WAYS OF THE “NATIVE”

sonal offices filled by bearers, chuprassies and the like,
are dishonestly held. This is partly due to Indian
traditions because these officers have always ' been as
accustomed to bribes as waiters in English restaurants
have been to tips. In fact, what we call bribes the Indian
regards as tips j and when servants of the sahib go to
his visitors and in a barefaced way ask for gifts, they are,
in their own eyes, doing nothing more than a waiter
does who touches his front hair and whines, “ Remember
the waiter, sir.” Moreover, one cannot help feeling
that had the Anglo-Indian been determined to eradicate
this evil he could have done so, intricate though its
ramifications undoubtedly are. I was the guest of
highly placed officials who have insisted upon honesty
and have got it.

Bribery, however, will never disappear until proper
wages are ' paid. The servants who attend 1 collectors
are paid Rs, 5 to Rs. 7 1 per month ; village accountants,
who ■ keep the. records, on which assessments,. are made,
receive Rs. 10, Rs. 12, and Rs. 14; field superintendents,, ,
who check' these accountants, get Rs. 20 to Rs. BO.
■The ordinary police, the most corrupt of all the public
servants of India, are paid from Rs. 8 to' Rs. 12 ' per
month, and head constables, whose dishonesties and
impositions can hardly be surpassed, are only paid
Rs. 15 to Rs. 20. 2 If you want your enemy hanged for
murder or imprisoned for any crime you choose to

lie promised. Six months elapsed and he met the official again.
u Bow did that arrangement about the canal get on? ” he was asked.
e< Damnably,” was the" reply. I am now getting only about half the
water I used to get for my mills, and my (hies have been increased by
an amount about double of what I used to give in bribes.* The col-
lector who told me this story said lie had had bribes twice offered to
him during his service, the sums being 100 rupees and 2 rupees.

1 The exchange value of the rupee is now fixed at fifteen to the
pound sterling.

2 Some of these wages are now being raised. But the increase is
only nominal, owing to the increased cost of living. The Government
of Bombay ( Financial Statement, 1909-10), for instance, has had to
raise the salaries of its clerical staff from 10 to 20 per cent, owing to
dearness of necessaries ; but when the pay of the police is raised by a
smaller fraction, we are asked to accept that as an increase in real wages.

72 THE WAYS OF THE “NATIVE”

charge him with, your nearest police officer is probably
ready to oblige you for a very moderate consideration.
If you want him arrested and paraded through the
streets in handcuffs, that is the easiest matter in the
world. It is pleasant to bear record, however, that
although I was in the very best position to hear in
confidence of the character of the Indian magistrates,
a very small number of them were even suspected of
tempering justice with monetary considerations and this
did not apply to a single important judge. 1 The cor-
ruption of the lower grades of the service, however, can-
not be denied.

Unfortunately we do not always set a good example
ourselves. The nimble wit of an Indian secs things to
which we are blind. When our officials spend public
money extravagantly on matters which affect them-
selves — for instance, when a certain official of ours
spends thousands of rupees from the public purse in
moving a tree from one corner of his house to another —
the acute Indian sees in that precisely the same thing
which, when practised by himself, we call appropriation
of public revenues to personal use. But his most fre-
quently quoted parallel is our system of travelling allow-
ances. Every one knows that officers, from school
inspectors to chaplains, put large sums of money into
their pockets by charging travelling allowances which
they never spend. I heard of a Church dignitary w r ho
was attending a Diocesan Conference at the Govern-
ment expense and who was to make a profit from his
allowance at the end of the meetings. I heard of a
school inspector who insisted upon billeting himself in
private houses whilst drawing hotel expenses. And the
smiling Babu in the office knows all about it, and when
you say to him, “ Now tell me about T.A.,” he grins a
knowing grin. There is not a man in the whole service

1 It is worth while observing that nine-tenths of the original civil
suits and more than three-fourths of the magisterial business of the
country come before Indian judges and magistrates. —Memorandum on
Indian Administration . Cd. 4956. 1909.

THE WAYS OF THE “ NATIVE ”

who does not know about T.A. It is referred to by its
initials like a close personal friend. This is an example
of how in India the moral preceptor must be as pure as
Caesar’s wife, and must keep examining his own habits
with a mind constantly freshened by intimate contact
with its unfamiliar surroundings. The West must
ask no excuses for its own bad habits which it is not
prepared to give to the East for its bad habits.

Akin to this defect is that of bearing false witness.
This is one of the most depressing experiences of the
friends of the Indian people, and is responsible for de-
stroying in many a man the sympathy with which he
began his official career. It cannot be condoned, and
unfortunately the struggle for existence which rages in
the lower grades of the Indian bar makes the reform
of witnesses impossible. British justice is thus made
difficult by the destruction of its basis of tolerably
honest evidence. The habit of bearing false witness is,
moreover, augmenting those forces in Indian life which
make social cohesion impossible. But it must not be
judged apart from the whole judicial system which
we have established in India. This is what happens.
A witness gives evidence which he knows to be false.
It is concocted beforehand, and he does his best to stick
to his story and baffle the lawyers. Most people simply
put this down to a lying spirit, attach to the people of
India this spirit as an attribute, and pursue the subject
no farther. This explanation, however, is altogether
insufficient. The phenomenon requires more study.

In the first place, the state of things here described
has arisen in spite of the strong condemnation pro-
nounced upon it in the Sacred Books. “ The witness
who speaks falsely shall be bound fast by Varuna’s
fetters during one hundred births : let men therefore
give no false testimony. . . . Naked and shorn, tor-
mented with hunger and thirst, and deprived of sight
shall the man who gives false evidence beg for food with
a potsherd at the door of his enemy .” 1 But in the great
1 Laws of Manu, Section viii. 82 and 98,

74 TH E WAYS OF THE “NATIVE”

,aw i K "’ k of !,n - devout Hindu from which these verses
arc taken exception was made in the ease of a mar,
who lied from religious and family motives. This ex-
plains some of the shortcoming. It is easy to stretch
eaniptioii so that it affects the relations between
i nc Hindu and his heathen conquerors. The Hindu
1.- I'V nut regard us as coming within his codes of honour
■ ’• i us obligation. Wc do not share his inner
■ - We are budtas, outcasts.

't n iM a considerable amount of false evidence is
' * ‘ ud is actually given under the belief that a
in.!!, should, always befriend a member of his family
or ins caste. A member of a well-known Mission told
me that the son of one of their most sincere converts
had been prosecuted for cheating passengers at railway
stations. The father immediately started to get to-
gether a crowd of false witnesses and to pay them for
them services. The Mission authorities came to hear of
it . called the father before them, and told him he must
■ t > The man was aghast. Such unnatural conduct
he had never known ! It is said that he submitted to
lie dbeipliiio of the Mission, but that he never pre-
t> ruled to agree with its decision and was very sore
' : , ■ ‘ < ! .

But. in the second place, one of the foundations of
British, legal justice-— the law of evidence — has not
only never bmi accepted in India but is contrary to
Indian conceptions of how to do justice. In India
justice ins been administered personally. Evidence
ha um( been sought from witnesses appearing on one
v.d or t he other, so much as from men who knew and
were themselves in the position of judges reporting to
Ingle r judge-, The village headman, or the village
Council-’ of Elders, or the village Panchayat gave out
justice more after the manner of arbitration than of
judgment given on evidence. Thus it came about that
'when Hi Tub legal methods were introduced, the
traditions which were inseparable from them at home
were not found in India at all, and the Indian had to

THE WAYS OF THE “ NATIVE ”

put his own meaning into them and take up his own
attitude to them. Unfortunately, he began wrong.
His conception of a witness is not one who speaks the
truth, but one who tells a tale and runs the gauntlet
of a hostile examination. He takes exactly the same
view of his function as a barrister does of his. lie is
there to support his client ; and if his opponent is not
clever enough, or if the case for the other side is not
convincing enough, he has no qualms if he is instru-
mental in getting a criminal let off or an innocent
man sent to jail.

The ethics of our own scientific expert witnesses
may serve to reveal the mind of the Indian in its relation
to the method of doing justice by means of evidence.
The scientific expert accepts his fee from either side
and simply does his best, like a lawyer, for his pay-
master. He would feel insulted if I said that he perverted
the truth when performing his functions, though I could
do so behind the shelter of Lord Bramwell’s gradation
of liars. He persuades himself, I suppose, that he is
telling the truth with a bias on the side of his fee. This
little quibble, however, has no existence for the subtle
Indian. He prevaricates like a philosopher, and not
like a man of dull wit under delusions. Thus we see
that at the bottom of the moral phenomenon presented
by Indian witnesses' is the simple fact that our law of
evidence is an alien method, and that it has failed from
the very beginning to gather round it the traditions
of the countries where it is native to the historical soil,

When one understands so much, one is also possessed
of the explanation why the Indian is so litigious. It is
in everybody’s mouth that the Indian is ruining himself
in law courts, and that this is an important factor in
the distribution of wealth and service in the country. 1
In 1856 there were 730,000 civil suits instituted in British
India ; in 1907 there were 1,867,995. What really has
happened is that we have destroyed in Indian social

1 There are 200,000 lawyers of various degrees of status and
respectability In India,

THE WAYS OP THE 46 NATIVE 99

life all those courts of arbitration and all those offices
which had as one of their functions the settlement of
personal disputes. We have thus driven the people
to the pleader and the barrister and the law court ;
and', these things are like alcohol — they create an appe-
tite for themselves. Moreover, they appeal to the
gambling weakness of the Indian, who often' embarks
upon litigation in the same spirit as a man puts a napo-
leon on the tables at Monte Carlo, The methods of
Western justice are but a wheel of fortune to the Indian
mind and are played with accordingly. Their existence
in India is evidence of the destruction of an old social
organisation.

An attempt should be made to retrace some of our
steps towards the methods of justice native to the soil
and, the people. The power to appeal should be limited
far more than it is, but, above all, arbitration courts
of village elders should be established for certain civil
cases, especially for land and property disputes. In
the old days, the village Panchayat was such a court.
It -was indeed the judicial organ of a petty republic.
Early administrators like Sir Thomas Munro, who was
governor of Madras in 1819, tell that the native litigant
who had a good case preferred to appeal to the Panchayat,
but he w r ho had a bad one sought the decision of a
Collector* Munro was one of the very few men w T ho saw
how the whole of the spiritual make-up of the Hindu
went to form his legal system, and how little our officials
understood that fact. He wrote ; 44 1 conscientiously
believe that for the purpose of discriminating the motives
.of action and the chances of truth in the evidence of
such a people, the entire life of the most acute and able
European judge, devoted to that single object, could not
.place him on a level with an intelligent Hindu Panchayat,
which is an admirable instrument of decision.” 1

But the problem of India will never be solved by the

1 One cannot overlook the likelihood that as these courts have
of use,; it may not he possible to re-establish them
endowed with their old prestige.

THE WAYS OF THE “NATIVE"

West brooding over and moralising upon the pin-pricks
which the Eastern mind inflicts upon it. The educated
Hindu is the centre of the trouble , 1 and we should
study India and the psychology of its people in relation
to him. We can brand him and curse him, as our
officials on the whole now do, or we can accept him,
as a select few of our officials advise, and in either case
take the consequences. He is now a difficulty in the
administration of a bureaucracy, whereas he should be
a problem in the government of co-operating authorities.
We have created him, and if nothing else moves us to
patient sympathy with him, that ought to do so.

He is, in the main, a Bengali. He is an embodiment
of the virtues and the vices of the Bengali. The last
king of Bengal preferred poetry to a kingdom, and in-
action to action ; and so, when the enemy was thundering
at his front door, he went away into peace by a back
exit, and the West and its kind have laughed at and
insulted him and his kind ever since . 2 But I am not
at all so sure that the day of the Bengali is over. He has
an awkward way of using his subtle mind when he is
driven into a corner, and he has an upsetting tendency
to treat lightly what the West treasures. When we fight
him, he is found to occupy a position we do not under-
stand, to use weapons which are unfamiliar to us, and
to employ salves and balms which produce, so far as
we are concerned, most confusing results. His Paris
exiles apply Western thought in a way we never in-
tended to apply it ; his condemned men smile that if
we kill them their disembodied spirits will be more
effective against us than they are before the death of
their hampering bodies. The contest between us and
them is like a battle between a slow-moving thing of
the earth with crushing paws, and a strong-winged
thing of the air with sharp talons.

1 Mr. Gokhale has stated that nine-tenths of the educated Hindus
are loyally disposed, and one-tenth is sulky or disloyal.

5 This flight of Lakhsman Sen is the subject of one of the finest of
lagore s pictures.

78 THE WAYS OF THE “NATIVE”

We take much consolation in the thought, however,
that the educated Hindus are only a handful, not a
million in a population of three hundred times as many.
And yet the few are becoming many. Every year
adds to their numbers — and their disappointments.
They control the native press, vernacular and English;
What public opinion there is in India is swayed by
them, and — this is even worse — by the priests. Finally,
it is as true in India as it is in the West that a few make
the opinions of the many, and that the cells which
determine growth are of an insignificant bulk compared
with those which maintain form and mass.

I fear that the house in which we are sheltering our
official hopes is built on the sand.

This comes to one like an intuition as one surveys
the swayings, the expectancies, the agitations of India.
And it is strengthened as one comes to understand the
nature of the human material upon which we have to act.
All critical passages in our Indian history, all sensational
situations in recent Indian tales, turn upon the mobility
of the mass mind of India. 1 The people of India are
like the aged Simeon and Anna the prophetess, who
watched by the Temple for the Messiah. Every year
prophets arise who blaze across the religious firmament
like a comet, and palpitating hearts are drawn to them.
The Indian mind is in a constant state of expectancy,
and a new leader or a new agitation finds it as mobile
as the moon finds the waters.

A mind constantly seeking the Eternal, not with foot
on solid ground but with wings in air, is a terrible thing
for Westerns to deal with. And such is the Indian
mind. The rich Indian whose hands are full of the jewels
of earth hears the call of the Infinite Void in his soul ;
and he gets up, lays aside his possessions, and, clothed
in ashes and with naught but begging-bowl in his hand,
goes out to seek peace. The common man leaves his
place and, clad in saffron, or in other pilgrim garb,
wanders away to some sacred place, to dip in some
1 Thi Hosts of the Lord , for instance.

THE WAYS OF THE “NATIVE” 79

stream of immortality, to worship in some procession,
so that his soul may be satisfied and the cool shades
of peace come to refresh his weary heart. The stormy
petrel of a politician feels the shadow of this life lie
heavily upon him and he lays his pen down and, with
“ the means of purification, silent, unallured by the
objects around him,” according to the injunctions in
the Laws of Manu, “ leaving the merits of his good
deeds to those who love him and his evil deeds to those
who hate him, he goes through meditation to the
Eternal Brahma.”

This spirit, blurred by blackguardism, dulled by in-
difference, coarsened by deceit, is nevertheless in its
purity the spirit which we have to understand.

I was talking one day with one of those educated
Hindus, and I was advancing arguments to convince
him of the weakness of his position in India. An agnos-
tic, a town-dweller, an Englishman in dress and veneer,
an insignificant minority— what was he but that ?
In reply to the last he said : “ Yes, a minority ! But
you do not know the mind of India. You inoculate us.
We can pass the word round that your serum is poison.
You then inoculate yourselves as a proof of your good
faith. We reply through a million gossips that the
English inoculate themselves with rose-water. 1 We
can announce a miracle ; we can proclaim a revelation
from the gods ; we can spread tales of desecrated shrines
and temples, of cow-killing. Ah ! you do not know the
Indian mind. A minority ! Minorities and majorities
are things of the West, not of India.”

That is so. A subtle educated class, a credulous
mass that is India. The people are as full of an

1 This is the reproduction of an actual instance.

2 The problem created by the credulity of the people cannot he re-

gard, e»I too seriously. On its amusing side this credulity is best seen
in advertisements of medicines. As a rule, they are offensive to Eng-
lish eyes and cannot be quoted. On its serious side it is seen in the
criminal conspiracies, the most of which are promoted by youths who,
as has been shown in a recent investigation, are drafting schemes for
the government of the country by a House of Commons consisting of
8000 members, and for its defence by fairyland fleets maimed" by
fairyland sailors I , :A : :'

80 THE WAYS OF THE “ NATIVE ”

insane suspicion of us to-day as they were before the
Mutiny. And the Administration which overlooks that
fact, and which puts its hopes on the placidity Mid friend-
shin of the mass, is like the inexperienced summer
boatman who trusts himself to a sea subject to angry
storms which arise without warning and apparently
from all the quarters of heaven at the same time. The
wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou canst not tell
whither it cometh or whither it goeth. Such is the mass

■ mind of India. . „ . ., u

The educated Indian is the natural co-operator with

the Administration, and woe betide us if we fail to
accept the situation which we ourselves have created.

THE NEW INDIA 01’ COMMERCE

The extent to which In^ia is becoming industrial in
the factory sense of the term is very marked. The first
cotton mill in India was opened in 1818, 1 the first jute
mill in 1854. Now there are 220 and 45 of these mills
respectively. It is estimated that there is from
£11,000,000 to £13,000,000 sunk in cotton and £5,000,000
in jute factories. During the last five years the looms
in cotton mills have increased by 50 per cent, the spindles
by 11 per cent. In the jute mills, looms, spindles, and
operators have increased by 50 per cent in the same
period. The figures showing the area under such crops
as cotton and jute reinforce these. There are 20,000,000
acres under cotton and about 4,000,000 under jute,
but both are subject to great seasonal fluctuations.
The value of the cotton crop is about £20,000,000, that
of jute about the same. The figures of occupation
published in the census are practically worthless,
partly because so many people do not make a living
at one calling all the year round, and therefore different
enumerators have adopted different classifications,
but mainly because it is impossible to separate factory
workers from home workers. The figures, however,
show that a population of 8,820,000 were returned in
1891 as cotton weavers, whilst 7,702,000 were so re-
turned in 1901 ; but in another table, where an attempt
has been made to divide out the people employed in large
industries from those employed in small, cotton, as the
former, employed 156,039 in 1901 and 118,000 in 1891.
In Bombay 81,000 cotton operatives were enumerated

... 1 This waa Calcutta, where the industry has not taken root.
The first Bombay mill was started in 1851. More than one-third of
the trade now centres in Bombay.

* ’ 8i

82 THE NEW INDIA OF COMMERCE

in 1891, 108,000 in 1901 ; in Madras, 6000 in 1891,
16,000 in 1901. In jute, the figures are 180,500 for 1901
and 64,800 for 1891. 1 61,000 jute operatives were

employed in Bengal in 1891 ; in 1901 there were
110,000. These are incomplete figures, but they show
a tendency that is seen even better by the eye in the
number of chimneys in the neighbourhood of Bombay
and Calcutta, and in the large number of mills which
one finds in process of extension.

Coal mining is also increasing in importance, the
average production per annum for the five years ending
1885 having been 1,227,197 tons, whilst in 1908 the pro-
duction was 12,737,770 tons. Between 1900 and 1906
banking capital increased by 60 lakhs 2 of rupees, railway
and tramway capital by 11 lakhs, and mill capital by
200 lakhs. It is said that the Swadeshi movement has
brought fifteen banks into existence with a capital
of four erores of rupees ; but the Indian habit of hoard-
ing has as yet hampered the creation of a native banking
system. It is estimated that industrial companies
in India were working in 1906 with paid-up capital
amounting to 556 lakhs of rupees above what it was
in 1900. Rises in wages, increasing productivity per
worker, Factory Acts, and so on, are following this
movement in India just as they did in England.

Leaving figures on one side, one can assume that
Indian factory industry is to increase. What is to
happen ? The Indian is very conservative. Kept
apart by religious observances and born into a stream
of habit stronger in its current than that which perhaps
runs through any other race, the Indian may not
rapidly adapt himself to the new conditions. At present
the factory worker has a bit of land somewhere, or he
belongs to a family in whose possessions he may share,

1 The occupation figures given in the Memorandum on Indian Ad-
ministration (Cd. 4966. 1909) are 212,000 in cotton mills and 167,000

in jute mills.

2 There are fifteen rupees to the pound ; a lakh is 100,000 rupees, a
:cjr6iesis;one hundred times that.

THE NEW INDIA OF COMMERCE 83

or he ; has village connections. That means that lie
absents himself from the factory and the large town
for a certain period every year, returns to agriculture,
'and supplements one of Ms incomes by the- other*
■Whilst he,, is working he is far more casual than ottr
■.workers,: ■One finds him strolling about the mill or
drinking water leisurely at the mill yard tap. The women'
leave their machines to hug and comfort yelling babies,
who are crawling on the floor, sleeping by the side of
machines or on piles of cotton or jute stuff, or perched
on the top of the tin cans used for receiving sliver ;
and anything from 5 to 10 per cent of a mill staff is
absent every day. This slackness of organisation
means long hours, irregularity and cheating in the pay-
ment of wages, 1 the employment of children, and un-
economicalJy used machinery. These conditions cannot
continue. The worker will have to be protected in some
way against the selfish operations of the capitalist, and
more stringent factory legislation will bring with it
■ more ■■ stringent factory rules. Workers will break
connection with village life ■ and become nothing but
'factory, hands. Indeed, this is already well marked.
An ordinary proletariat class is arising in India — without
land, without family connections, without the pro-
tection of the old social order, and dependent for what
security it has on legislation and its own combinations.
It will not swamp India ; it may never form a very large
percentage of the population of India ; it will be im-
portant, however. Though less than 10 per cent of the
Indian population lives in towns the percentage is
increasing, and it is of no little .-significance that when
the Census of 1901 was taken barely one-third of the
people in Calcutta and not one-fourth of the people in
Bombay were bom there. Thus, even in India emigra-
tion from the country to the towns has begun.

One finds this industrial class swarming in over-

1 The custom is that a workman lias to allow his wages to fall two
mouths into arrear. He thus gets into the clutches of money-
lenders.

84 1 THE NEW INDIA OF COMMERCE

crowded coolie lines, sometimes regimented by an
overseer to whom the workers owe their job, and who,
in • ' consequence, demands commissions from them,
sometimes living in ordinary working-class parts of the
town under exceedingly bad conditions. - ' When , the
coolie lines belong to the employers, a certain amount
of care is taken of the workpeople. A doctor is some-
times employed by the owners, a good supply of water
is provided, and drainage channels are kept up. One
with an experience of the West must look upon' this,
commercial philanthropy with grave misgivings what-
ever immediate benefit it may be to the workers.

Calcutta and Bombay and similar towns will have to
face a housing problem which no town in the , West
has ever, experienced. Wages, will increase, machines,
will; be better used, the wealth of India will mount up
but' will remain in comparatively few hands, there will
be much smoke, where there is now sun. To the creation
of such an India things are now shaping. At present
they have only got so far as the old familiar discussion
with us : Whether shorter hours will lower wages and
reduce profits, and whether factory legislation is , a
menace to employers,

A few enlightened men, some of them mill-workers
themselves, are trying to prepare for the inevitable
changes, . ■' A young society called the Mill Workers’
Protection Association is now at work in Bombay on
lines similar to those pursued by the Women’s Industrial
Council in England, For the present condition of the
Indian working man is wonderfully like that of the
English working woman. He does not understand his
own position well enough to enable him to act effectively.
Only the faintest glimmer of Trade Unionism is streaking
his horizon with light,

"/In face of the industrial developments' which one sees '
in Calcutta and Bombay, will hand industry survive
- , .It/is based on agriculture, 'because' it . depends,
mainly on the village market, The wares of 'this ''place ’
a market, amongst; the select lew;:,;

THE NEW INDIA OF COMMERCE 85

but that will not keep in existence the millions of textile
workers and silver workers, of potters and carpenters,
of dyers and oil-pressers, scattered all over India. As
yet by far and away the greater part of the internal
commerce of India takes place between local producers
and local consumers, and this will remain true whilst
the mass of the people live in villages and engage in
agriculture. At the present moment about 70 per cent
of the people of India depend more or less upon agri-
culture for a living. 1 That percentage will diminish,
but it will do so gradually, so that, with some assistance
from public opinion and technical education, the handi-
craftsman can exist for along time, though in diminish-
ing numbers, alongside factory industry. His greatest
menace is the increasing cost of living, which will raise
his cost of production, whilst factory industry in India
has yet broad margins for effecting economy. Swadeshi
will not necessarily protect him, though it is said that
it has considerably affected the demand for hand-
loom cotton in Eastern Bengal. The handloom worker
must depend ultimately upon the cheapness of his
products and the taste of purchasers. If one or other
fails him he will have to become an agricultural labourer
or drift into the factories, and in either ease become one
of the proletariat. This struggle between factory and
handloom is a grim battle, and practically every Western
influence is behind the factory. Moreover, it is the
economic source of not a little political unrest.

Although there are sections of Indian opinion which
look on impatiently whilst factory industry grows,
and are never tired of telling us that if certain things
were done, its progress would be more complete, I am
not at all sure but that for the sake of India herself

1 The Census of 1901 showed a greater proportion than did that of
1891, hut as explained in the Memorandum accompanying the tables :
" The proportion for 1891 refers to the number of persons solely depen-
dent on agriculture, whilst that for the present Census includes also
those with other occupations who named the agricultural one as their
chief means of support.” Other differences between the two reports
are also pointed out . — Census Report, I, pp. 207, etc.

86 THE NEW INDIA OF COMMERCE

slow progress is best. There is a disorganisation, about
Indian industry ; the buildings have become old rapidly;
the workers are raw ; the social unsettlement caused
by the change has been considerable ; things have been
thrown together and brought together anyhow. If
India were now to settle down for the time being and
put her industrial life into something like order, the
apparent pause in the outward evidence of increasing
prosperity would be for her benefit. I know this cannot
be done. Competitor struggling with competitor makes
it impossible. Unregulated and disorganised, Indian
industry will go on by rule of thumb as ours did ; but
the fact remains that even if factory industry would
grow up more rapidly under Protection, it would not
be a gain to India.

Be that as it may, two things trouble the industrial
interests. The first is the Excise duty on cotton im-
posed to re-establish conditions of Free Trade after
an import duty had been imposed. The industrial
effect has been almost nil, except that it has increased
the price of cotton goods to the consumer and thus
limited the market. Still, the cotton industry has ad-
vanced in India under Free Trade as well as it has
advanced in any other part of the world. But the
Excise has been exceedingly provocative of ill feeling.
It is regarded as a proof that the interests of Lancashire
are put before the interests of India by the Indian
Government, and it has helped to turn India’s thoughts
in the direction of Protection. The income derived
from the Customs and Excise duties on cotton goods
amounted in 1908-9 to £1,050,000 — far too great a sum
in the present condition of Indian finances to be sacri-
ficed at one swoop ; but the sooner it goes the better.
It will remove a cause of considerable irritation, con-
tribute to a reduction in the cost of living, and help
towards clear economic thinking in India.

The other thing which concerns industrial India is
kRrpt^ction. Of Imperial Preference it thinks Tittle and
cares less. If it could, India would protect itself so as

THE NEW INDIA OF COMMERCE 87

to keep out English cotton goods as much as possible. 1
This opinion is held not only by those interested in
factories, but also by the Nationalist sections, -which are
studying the history of our economic relations with
India. As a result, they have come to regard us pri-
marily as the exploiters of Indian industry. We did
our best to kill the cotton industry in India by pro-
hibiting the import of Indian printed calicoes into
England (1721), and India would now pay us back and
would keep us out altogether, so as to re-establish her
native workshops. Thus Protection is an item in the
Nationalist creed, and is hankered after by some in-
dustrial interests. “ Have you ever thought out the
consequences of Protection on India ? ” I asked one of
the most eminent of the Nationalist leaders in Calcutta.
“ No,” he replied, “ I simply want to get our craftsmen
at work again ; and so long as English stuff comes into
the market that cannot be done.” “ Have you thought
whether it would be your craftsmen or your factories
that would benefit — if either did ? ” I pursued ; but he
had not. Nevertheless, Nationalism and Protection
are closely allied in India, just as they are closely allied
in Ireland. The desire to grasp certain industrial gains
all at once blinds both movements to the injury in-
flicted by their proposed methods. Certain it is that
whoever studies the figures I have quoted at the opening
of this chapter cannot honestly assert that Free Trade
conditions have kept Indian factory industries in a
crippled and stagnant condition. Protected countries
show no better results.

A study of Indian trade figures shows in the plainest
way that Imperial Preference would damage British
trade in India, and that Protection has nothing to

1 If the State in India liad been identified in economic interests
with, the Indian people, some measure of Protection might have been
adopted by it long ago, , * . The people of India ought therefore to
step into the vacuum and do by voluntary Protection [Swadeshi] what
the State might have achieved in an easier way by tariffs and bounties, 751
—Presidential Address to the Indian Industrial Conference by Dewari
Bahadur^Ambalab S, Desai, late Chief Justice of Baroda,

88 THE NEW INDIA OP COMMERCE

offer to Indian manufactures. The exports from India
to us were valued at £ 30 , 000,000 in 1907 - 8 , and of this
£ 24 , 000,000 consisted of tea, wheat, raw cotton, skins,
seeds, rice, Jute, and wool, articles upon which a pre-
ference would be valueless to India, e.g. tea, or impossible
for us, e.g. cotton and jute. The exports to which it
might be practicable to grant preference on our markets
are of the most insignificant proportions in the sum
total of Indian trade. I need not discuss Imperial
Preference, however, in connection with India. No one
talks about it there. Indeed, except amongst some of
the titled and zemindar class, one does not come across
the thought of Empire at all. The Indian does not care
a brass button about the Empire. If he has any feeling
about it at all, it is one of resentment against Dominions
like Australia and South Africa, which insult his race
and deny it justice.

India’s sole interest in tariff questions is to keep out
all goods which come from England and the rest of the
world, and protect its infant industries. A scheme of
Imperial Preference forced upon India would be repre-
sented as another attempt of England to retain for
itself the exploitation of the country. It would be
another political grievance. Nor will India benefit much
by Protection. Its total import was valued at
£ 81 , 000,000 ( 1908 - 9 ), of which £ 25 , 000,000 was cotton,
£ 20 , 000,000 metals and manufactures thereof, £ 7 , 000,000
sugar ; the rest is a miscellaneous import. The cotton
import is largely of goods which India cannot yet make,
but which it will make in due course ; the metal imports
are in the same position ; whilst it imports leather,
sugar, tobacco, and a few similar things, for the sole
reason that its own methods for producing these com-
modities are so antiquated and uneconomical that it
must take them from outside. The advance it is making
in technical education and in business methods will soon
enable it to produce a far larger share of these things
for itself. India, therefore, does not require Protection.
K :It':'yriil':keep/.the country conservative ; it will add to

THE NEW INDIA OF COMMERCE 89

the load borne by the poor consumers’; it will hand
India over more completely to the financiers and the
exploiters who use Western methods. India is slowly
stretching forth its hand to grasp the gains which 'Pro-
tection seems to offer it. When it does so, it will find
that they are not in Protection's keeping, but in that of .
business methods, applied science, factory organisation.

All over India to-day there is a quickening interest
in technical and scientific education. It may take some
time to get into its proper lines of ' development, but
there it is* It is not altogether filled with admiration
for our methods* “ Shall we rely upon our rulers/ 5
asked Professor T. K. Gajjar at the Surat Industrial
Conference in 1907, 64 when, as Mr. Haldane observes,
they are themselves outstripped by Germany, America,
and other countries which have, ’..taken the fullest
advantages of the progress of modern knowledge ? 55
.The impediments in the way of education are many and
■great,;;: but', the ^personal determination -and; the.,. socio-
logical tendencies working for it are exceedingly strong.
Those 'State appointments of Directors of Industry,
those Government Bureaux and Museums, of Industry,"
those economic surveys of States, those- weaving and'
similar public institutions, those industrial and techni-
cal exhibitions, those scientific scholarships, and, above
all, those general demands for better industrial, oppor-
tunities and for scientific research, which one hears about
all over India, are to bear fruit. 1 I have seen some of
the schools and scientific laboratories ; I have seen some
of the mills;! have met some of the “ captains: -of

1 I need not cumber my pages with details ; but to indicate the
work which is being 1 undertaken, 1 may refer to a Report of' the
Association for the Advancement of Scientific and Industrial Educa-
tion of Indians (1909) which is before me. This Society was founded
in 1904. It has sent some hundreds of young men abroad, and it
reports upon some who have been studying the manufacture of porce-
lain, lead pencils, candles, matches, buttons,, leather, printing inks,
umbrellas. Others have been studying chemical processes such as
dyeing am/ perfumery. An Agricultural Settlement has been estab-
lished, Indian banking promoted, a small Industries Development
Company started.

90 THE NEW INDIA OF COMMERCE

industry,” both on the manufacturing and the financial
sides ; I have noted when speaking to some of the
most devoted national leaders a decided reaction against
a literary education ; and I have come away convinced
that the industrial future of India is assured, and that
one of the great dangers ahead — a danger which I thi nk
some of the sympathetic administrators I met are
inclined to minimise — is an individualism far less
controlled than ours was a century ago, armed with
opportunities of exploitation far more dangerous than
ours ever were, productive, in consequence, of evils
to the people far more dire than any which we have
known.

I have referred to Swadeshi and the hand- worker,
and I return to it to repeat that Swadeshi is not going
to carry India very far. As a sentiment it is excellent ;
as an industrial policy its limits of usefulness are
exceedingly circumscribed. It is true that Swadeshi has
done something for technical education, and that it has
tried to encourage some branches of hand-work. But,
however offensive the thought may be to the good
Nationalist, the Indian Swadeshi movement is imbued
with Western notions of profit, factories, balance of
trade. One has only to read the presidential addresses
at the annual Indian Industrial Conferences to see that.
The President at Surat, for instance, boasted that fifteen
private banks, five navigation companies, twenty-two
new cotton mills, two jute mills, and so on, had been set
on foot by Swadeshi. The Swadeshi which this gentle-
man voiced was one which would enable him and his
class to create an efficient machinery for the exploitation
of the poor wage-earner without let or hindrance by the
Government. Many Indians curse Lancashire solely
because they want the powers of exploitation for them-
selves which they imagine Lancashire to possess through
the British Government. The Pathan has become a
money-lender in Calcutta, the Hindu is thinking of
ledger balances with an itching palm. The new' India
of commerce is growing visibly before our eyes.

THE LAND 0E THE POVERTY-STRICKEN

A tour ia India is a study in violent contrasts. Ruler
and subject, riches and poverty, jewels and nakedness,
fatness and leanness, exist cheek by jowl in this won-
derful land, and there is little transitional shading to
soften the line separating one from the other. They
parade arm-in-arm before you. Each is absolute. It
is as though the sun suddenly shot up from below the
horizon to the zenith in a moment and blazed upon
you dazzling beams, and then the next shot down into
night, leaving you in bewildering, murky darkness.
The darkness, however, sometimes appears to be ever-
lasting. For days and days one goes through the land
and sees nothing but thin bodies toiling, toiling, toiling,
trudging, trudging, trudging; or pinched bodies wor-
shipping, worshipping, worshipping with a sadness
that one sees in no other temples. India is the home
of the poverty-stricken. And this was borne in upon
me all the more that its poverty was embodied in forms
of the most perfect human grace. The woman coming
from the well with her pitcher on her head ; the mother
with her baby a-straddle across her thigh; the culti-
vator behind his plough and oxen ; the man walking
on the road, in pose and demeanour are as perfect as
if they were the models of the best Greek sculptors.

To ascertain how wealth is being distributed in
India is one of the most difficult of tasks. Until but
yesterday, India was a land of agriculturists, where
the arts and crafts were pursued by methods familiar
for centuries. Each community of cultivators had
its complement of service givers, its barber and potter,
its weaver and washerman, its blacksmith and money-
lender ; and they all depended for a livelihood on the
fruitfulness of nature. When that was bountiful all

92 THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN

flourished ; •when that failed all languished and starved.
They had their little stores in reserve, but there was
no living on averages, no capitalist accumulation.
They depended in the main on the season ; the source
of their supplies was limited to their own neighbour-
hood ; their market was equally circumscribed. They
discharged their obligations in most things not at any
absolute price, but in proportions of crop yieldings.
Their social economy was mutual and elastic. Thus
they bore heavy burdens, because in their economy
the art of adjustment was brought to perfection, and
in their hearts was a resignation to the decrees of Fate.

Rut two great changes have come over them. Their
obligations are ceasing to be relative and have to be
discharged at average prices, and their market on the
one hand, and source of supply on the other, have
become the world and are no longer in their village.

Their heaviest obligations are to the Government,
and the weight of taxation is blamed for the poverty of
the people. We take in land revenue £20,000,000 per
annum, £3,000,000 from salt, £11,000,000 from Customs
and Excise, and have a net income of a little under
£50,000,000 and a gross one of over £70,000,000. On
the other side of the account we spend on Army and
military works, not including strategic (sic) railways,
a sum which is just short of £20,000,000 ; it costs
£6,000,000 to collect the revenue, and we spend about
£19,000,000 in England, not including the cost of
stores for Railway and Irrigation Works.

The Revenue works out at a tax of 8s. 6f d. per head
of the population. This seems small, particularly when
it is remembered that Is. 8d. of the sum comes from
the land revenue, which is not a tax but a rent. We
must not be misled into an unwarrantable optimism,
however, by these figures. For the burden of taxation
is measured not by its absolute amount, but by its ratio
tq income. For instance, our burden at home is about
£3 per head ; our income £40 per head. The burden
upon the British Indian is 3 s. 6| d. per head — or, de-

THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN 93

ducting the land revenue, Is. 10 § d. per head— -whilst
his average annual income is not more than £2 A

1 think that it would be upon expenditure that an
impartial critic would fix his attention. Financial
authorities of a country not responsible to public
opinion, not in any way depending upon the consent
of the taxpayers for office, must be more subject to the
vice of extravagance than similiar authorities who cannot
forget that taxpayers are electors. This is fundamental.

The personal extravagance of our rulers and officials
can be seen by the eye. Simla residents are able to
point out several examples of this as regards the houses
of officials. I am thinking of a very gross ease as I
write. It was paid for by the people of India ; it was
unnecessary, and the result of personal whims, and it
was not subject to a proper independent audit carried
out by an official in the position of our Controller and
Auditor-General. The first step necessary to put
Indian expenditure on a sound footing is the appoint-
ment of an Auditor-General who will be direetly re-
sponsible to the India Office or, better still, to the
House of Commons itself. This would also put ah end
to that only too common experience in India of sanc-
tioned expenditure on works being greatly exceeded
without even fresh approval by the Government. It
would also mean that information of a fulness sufficient
to be of use would be placed before the House of Com-
mons itself — something after the style of our Public
Accounts Committee Reports. It may be that the
Viceroy requires two establishments at Simla ; it may
be that Lieutenant-Governors require to move trees
from one corner of their residences to another at great
expense ; it may be that railway engineers cannot
estimate costs within ten or twelve lakhs of rupees ;
it may be that roads to private houses have to be built

1 .Although I write thus I must again warn readers against the
fallacy of averages in Indian revenue discussions. For instance, the
land revenue of 1 a 8d. per head is most unevenly distributed between,
say, Bengal and the Punjab, and whole sections of the community
have an income of far less than £2 per head.

94 THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN

almost literally of rupees, but the House of Commons
might as well know about these things — even if Akbar
did indulge in them in his time without having to con-
sult any one. When there is no personal extrava-
gance, every Englishman employed to do his work for
which an Indian is fitted is a burden upon the Indian
taxpayer . 1

There is also the old grievance about the cost of the
Army. In 1885 a change took place in our frontier
policy, and in that year Lord Ripon left. Then began
the epoch of bombastic Imperialism at the expense of
India. The Finance Minister of that day objected,
but military expenditure was increased at a bound by
1,600,000 rupees per annum. The cost of annexing
Upper Burma was similarly placed on Indian shoulders,
and no justification ever has, or ever can be, offered
for it. It is unspeakably mean of us to place this
burden on the Indian’s back simply because he must
bear any load we put upon him. Nine-tenths of the
charge of the Army in India is an Imperial charge.
Canada, South Africa, and Australia should bear it as
much as India. It is a piece of the most bitter cynicism
to find the Imperial doors of our colonies shut in the
faces of these poor people, who bear such an inordinate
share of the cost of Imperial maintenance, and at whose
expense these Dominions are protected from the fear
of war. If £18,000,000 of the Army charges were met by'
the whole Empire we might look the Indian taxpayer
in the face as honest men. At present we cannot do so.

I have found myself unable to feel much wrath about
what is called “ the drain.” In so far as it is caused
by our undoubtedly expensive administration, it should
be stopped. Of the 2400 offices in India carrying
salaries of over £800 only 70 are held by Indians.
£5,000,000 per annum seems to be the extent of this
extravagance, but it is exceedingly difficult to get very

opinion on tins point was i “ If v.-e arc to
people efficiently and cheaply we must govern
them by means of themselves.”

THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN 95

accurate details to go upon. The payments in the
form of interest on debt (so far as the debt has been
incurred for Indian purposes), on loans for public
works, on other capital provided in England, are legiti-
mate, We have borrowed for India more cheaply than
India itself could have done. Moreover, if the loans
have come from London, that is owing to the unwilling-
ness of Indians themselves to place capital at the dis-
posal of industrial enterprise. This weakness is em-
phasised at every industrial conference held in India ;
but as Indians are now coming forward to support
banking and other financial undertakings, the day of
excessive borrowings in England may be assumed to
be over. This complaint is not confined to India, In
Australia I have heard grumbling that English capital
spent in the development of Australia should claim
Australian dividends ! The complaint is unjust and
does not reflect credit upon those who make it. The
fact is, however, that India — if it is to embark upon
Western industrial ways and seek goals to which these
ways lead — will still be benefited by some English capital,
though, if it could be induced to provide its own, that
would be an advantage. That cannot be done as yet.

On the other hand, a little over a million and a half
pounds spent on education 1 is ridiculous. The small
State of Baroda, with a population of 2,000,000 souls,
spends £660,000 on this, and has committed itself to
a policy which will soon cost £1,000,000 per annum.
Moreover, so patent has been our failure to make this
expenditure efficient, that perhaps the most melan-
choly official publication in India is the Quinquennial
Report on Educational Progress. To this day, 90 per
cent of the males and 99 per cent of the females in India
arc illiterate. -ev r 'cvpt.cp t

Our expenditure on education, however, is only
1 The total expenditure is £4,000,000, of which £1,000,000 comes
from school fees, and the remainder from charity, local exchequers,
etc. In Baroda, education has been compulsory since 1904-5, an
experiment having been carried on in one Taluka 'since 1893, and , the
law is being gradually carried into full force.

96 THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN

typical We spend far too much of the income of India
on .Imperial purposes and far too little on Indian
development ; far too much on machinery and far too
little on the conditions in conjunction with which the
machinery must be ran*

On the whole, I think two charges can be substan-
tiated against us. Our Government is extravagant,
and we have behaved meanly to India. We charge
the, Indian taxpayer with the cost of the India Office
in Whitehall — even with the cost of building it: we
would never think of making' such a charge against our
Colonies ; India has to pay for Aden and for Imperial
Embassies into different parts of Asia ; but the depth
of meanness was surely touched when we tried —
happily .unsuccessfully — to charge India with £7000,
the cost of the representatives and guests from India
who took part in the coronation ceremonies of the late
King.

A dispute of a fury equal to that on- the amount of
taxation has been raised as to the method of levying,
the taxes. Is the land revenue fairly imposed ? Is
what is called the “ Permanent Settlement ” the only
just method of raising this tax, or is there justice as
well as money in the method of periodic revaluation
and readjustment of the tax ? 1
■ The. ' Permanent Settlement of Bengal was accom-
plished in 1793, when a class of landlords was recognised'
and the land revenue fixed. The arrangement thus made
is that the cultivator shall pay rent to a landlord, and
that the landlord shall pay a certain percentage of that
rent to the State . 2 In its earlier years, the Nationalist
movement, both in India and at home, was Liberal in
■ its economics as well as in its politics, and a scheme of
Permanent Settlement was in the forefront of the
political proposals made to alleviate the distress of the

1 The Permanent Settlement area in 1906-7 was 122,000,000 acres,
^/yieMing, 4|: ''crores of rupees to the' 'Exchequer. The temporarily'

settled area was 203,000,000 acres, yielding 14| crores.

2 This revenue now represents only S per cent of the produce of

economic rent being private property* . ,:0.

THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN 97

cultivator. In one of his latest books, 1 Mr. Romesh
Dutt marshals the arguments favourable to the Bengal
system. Under it improvements are encouraged because
the Government cannot. step in and claim, in the shape
of enhanced revenue, the benefits which, follow upon
improvements. The system of a frequent valuation
of fields for the purpose of ascertaining whether their
value is going up or down, and of increasing their re-
venue if the former is taking place, tends to keep the
cultivator from advancing with the times, because
he receives no permanent reward for his energy. The
Government takes everything ; the cultivator gets
nothing. For a long time this was the view of the Indian
reformer, and it was a view in accord with prevailing
Liberal ideas of the West, which did not discriminate
between rent and other forms of income.

It is altogether unsound, however, because it is based
upon a misconception of the nature of economic rent.
The landlord is an essential feature of the Bengal system,
and if the Bengal cultivator pays no revenue he pays
rent. By precisely the same causes which raise the
amounts of revenue to be paid under temporary assess-
ment, the Bengal cultivator found he had to pay
increased rents to the zemindar. In other words,
economic rent is not available for the tenant cultivator.
It does not l'emain in his pocket. If he be a cultivating
owner, so soon as the economic rent of his holding
becomes of any value, he lets his land to another and
takes the rent without putting himself to the trouble
of cultivating by his own labour and capital. Whatever
the system may be, economic rent always tends to
separate itself from wages and interest, and to become
the subject of independent holding and an opportunity
for exaction. Thus we find that in Bengal the tenant
was rack-rented because the Government had not
claimed the whole of the economic rent. A class of
zemindar landlords grew up who used their economic
powers to take more than was economically just, and
1 Famines in India.

98 THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN

the tenant had to be protected by a special code of' law
known as the Bengal Tenancy Acts (1859 to 1885).
Similar Land Laws have had to be passed in the United
Provinces and the Punjab, Madras, Bombay, Burma,
and Assam to meet similar circumstances, and petty
occupiers are being turned into proprietors (practically,
if not nominally), and are protected against an increase
of revenue on their own improvements. The Bengal
Acts restore to the cultivator his ancient right to security
(provided he pays his rent), which had practically dis-
appeared by 1858 owing to the operation of the landloi’d
system. They lay down the process by which his rent
can be increased, and endow him with rights of occu-
pancy which amount to a system of dual ownership.
But even now the system is uncertain and inequitable.
The public, represented by the Government, do not get
a fair share in the socially created increments, and the
cultivators secure a part of economic rent in varying
proportions, and not in accordance with their deserts.
An enormously wealthy class of zemindars has been
created, and the custom of official bleeding by offering
them C.I.E.’s and other decorations for subscriptions
to the hobbies of Collectors and Lieutenant-Governors
has grown up as a substitute for the more direct way
of obtaining public revenue by a land assessment. The
system of Permanent Settlement has nothing either in
theory or practice to commend it, and even where
supplemented by Tenancy Acts it is clumsy, and is a
poor substitute for the Bombay system.

The Bombay system is one of periodical valuation
of lands with a view to a readjustment of burdens, so
as to keep them in some steady ratio to economic rent.
When the price of produce rises more than the cost of
cultivation, economic rent also rises ; when land becomes
more valuable owing to the building of railways - or
expenditure on irrigation works, economic rent rises.
Under such circumstances the revenue paid by land to
the Government should also rise, because the land tax
a rent. In the adjustment of revenue,

THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN;! 99

of course, the greatest care must be taken not to confuse
interest on capital expenditure with rent — for instance,
all the benefit of irrigation or manuring must not be
regarded as rent, because much of it is interest ; and
again, care must be taken not to increase the land
revenue so suddenly that it seriously affects the standard
of life of the cultivator* Thus, short settlements may
be more just to the cultivator than long ones, although
at a first glance they seem more oppressive. But those
are details the settlement of which must depend on the
ability and honesty of officers and the financial genius
of Governments. The principle underlying the Bombay
system, that rent is largely an unearned increment,
that the land revenue is not a tax on private wealth
in the proper sense, but the property of the public from
its very origin, is one which ought to foe accepted
unhesitatingly by every collectivist critic of Indian
administration. 1 In doing so I take my stand against
one ' of the oldest contentions of the Indian school of-.
Reformers ; but '.this is only one of 'Several points, upon
which, the, modern ' school must disagree with the ' older
one. .

Whether 'or not:' this good principle has been oppres-
sively applied is a totally different question wliiehpias
given rise to a voluminous literature, and the problem
has been greatly complicated by considerations regarding
how the money has been spent ; whether the Indian
Army ought to be an Imperial charge, whetheff'the
European service in India constitutes a drain on Indian
resources, and so on.

But for the moment confining my attention to the
impost itself, the balance of evidence and official

1 I ‘have frequently noticed that in the Indian press It is argued
that the land tax is not a rent, because it is not lived by competition.
It is providential for India that it is not, for if the Government put up
lands to auction, so as to impose rents, its income would be ’much
higher, because competing tenants would do themselves greater injury'
than they meet with at the hands of collectors. An expert valuation
is a better way of fixing a just economic rent than competition between
would-be users. " "

100 THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN

admission seems to be that in many places the impost
has been too heavy, and that the wages and interest of
the cultivator have frequently been drawn upon by the
Government in addition to economic rent. If we assume
that the volume by Mr. Dutt to which I have just
referred is an authoritative statement of one view, and
the reply which Lord Curzon caused to be published 1 is
the authoritative statement of the official view, the
careful critic who has studied both will probably finish
his task with some such conclusions as follow. He
will agree that in many details — most of them, however,
quite unessential to the main charges — Mr. Dutt h§s
made mistakes, and he will reject as of no value all
statements as to averages made by both sides — but
particularly by the officials— on the ground that
averages, taken over such a wide field, and covering
values the smallest variation in which means a great
deal in proportion to the total effective income of the
people concerned, must be quite worthless for practical
purposes. He will consequently regret that the Govern-
ment of India has never accepted the challenge thrown
out by its critics to institute a careful investigation into
the social conditions of groups of typical villages on the
plan adopted by Mr. Charles Booth and Mr. Rowntree,
because in that way alone can real evidence be placed
before impartial judges.

He Will also, I think, find grounds for believing that,
partly owing to readjustments and partly owing to
changes in Indian social economy, the burden of land
revenue is less than it was. 2 Things are improving.
The extension of the cultivable area and the increasing
value and regularity 3 of the crops raised have un-

1 Land Revenue Policy of the Indian Government . Calcutta, 1002.

. 2 The assessments in' 187B-9 amounted to 22 crores of rupees, in
1905-6 to 29 crores. This represents an increased value of products
from 300 crores to 400 crores, which is much under the actual in**
crease. — Journal of Royal Statistical Society , September, 1909, p. 555.

f I write this in spite' of 'recent, famines,; because the’ .stepsvThai
have been taken to make the people independent of the seasons have
undoubtedly been effective.

THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN 101

doubtedly increased the economic rent of India, and
thereby lightened the burdens of the land tax ; whilst
the agitation of which I have taken Mr. Dutt as the
representative has had its effect upon the official mind.
Even those officials whom I would unhesitatingly
regard as the least sympathetic and most ignorant of
Indian thought and feeling spoke of the possibility of
an increase of land revenue with a terrified shudder,
whilst the best men readily admitted that excesses
had been imposed, that the cultivators had been,
driven into the clutches of money-lenders in conse-
quence, and that the greatest care should be taken to
leave the cultivators an ampler margin than they now
have for an improvement in their standard of life.

But the conclusion of farther reaching importance
than any of the others has reference to the use of
averages. In the official defence, an assumption, very
reasonable under Western conditions, but fatal to good
results under Indian conditions, is made. Assessments
are fixed on average years. In good years the lull
economic rent is not taken ; in bad years a little more
than the economic rent is taken ; averaging the two,
justice is done. Here is the West blundering in the
East. The Indian cultivator does not think, and does
not organise his economy, in periods longer than a
season or annual round of seasons. He is not a capitalist
who accumulates and averages. One year he has, the
next year he has not. Even when he has hoardings in
the shape of ornaments he does not regard them as mere
coin. They are like family jewellery, and will not be
disposed of except on a great pinch. He borrows rather
than converts these ornaments into cash. Hence in
bad years he often pays his land assessment from
borrowed money, upon which he has to pay 25 to SO
per cent. Thus it is that fixed charges have driven
the cultivator steadily into the hands of the usurer. It
is not that the charges have been always excessive of
themselves. They have not been sufficiently elastic
to meet the short views which have been characteristic

102 THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN

of Indian economy from time immemorial ; they have
been too rigid to fit into his habit of meeting his obliga-
tions by sharing his crops. 1 Averages, erroneous every-
where, are more fruitful of mistakes in India than
elsewhere ; obligations calculated on capitalist habits
can never be anything but oppressive when imposed on.
communities where payments have been almost directly
made in kind, and where the measure of economic
obligation has been a season’s crop.

In this respect India is now changing. The factory,
with its demand for wage workers and its drain upon
agricultural labourers ; the export of corn, with its
tendency to establish cash payments instead of kind
exchanges or barter, have already seriously affected the
old economy of India, the recent rise in prices being only
an indication of more radical changes. But before the
change began, and whilst the transition time lasts, the
Western methods of imposing averaged burdens are
bound to work considerable havoc and to result in much
injustice. rigi . ■ .

If one feels more bewilderment than enlightenment
in plunging through the mass of assertion-and counter-
assertion that has been made during this controversy,
the great outstanding and ultimate facts unfortunately
admit of no dispute. They are confessed in every
official publication. The people are the most industrious
in the world; much of their land is fertile and yields
rich crops ; whenever a famine comes they are stricken
with starvation and die by the thousand, whilst millions
a, re shattered in physical vigour. Sir William Hunter
said that 40,000,000 Indians go through life with
insufficient food ; Sir Charles Elliott estimated that one-
half of the agricultural population never satisfied hunger
fully from one year’s end to another. From thirty to
fifty million families live in India on an income which
does not exceed 3J d. per day. In July, 1900, according
to the Imperial Gazetteer, famine relief was administered

i: ■<>:.' rijdJity' of the reterrae system forces them iath debt j’-—
MaeDoanell, Famine Gomrniss on Report (1910), par. 301.

THE LAND OP THE POVERTY-STRICKEN 103

daily to 6.500,000 persons. The poverty Q f India is not
an opinion, it is a fact. At the best of times the culti-
vator has a millstone of debt about his neck. The
Famine Commission’s Report of 1901 informs us that
at least one-fourth of the cultivators in the Bombay
Presidency have lost their lands and less than one-fifth
arc free from debt, When it is remembered that on
his borrowings the cultivator pays interest at the rate
of 30 per cent per annum, it is easily seen that any-
thing — whether his own extravagance or the rigidity

of collection of Government taxes— which drives him toi
the money-lender is like a sentence of economic death \
upon him. But, again, one must be warned that the
district variations are considerable. One can gather
that by the eye in passing from place to place. The
cultivator of Oudh, living under a system of landlordism
pure and simple, is a very much more pitiable sight than
the cultivator in Central Bengal or in the Punjab.

In this connection one must consider specifically the
problem presented by famine. A careful study of the
material available does not support the view that famine
is becoming more prevalent. It is undoubtedly better
advertised. Every locality is now' under the eye of
Government and the newspapers, and people suffer less
in obscurity than they did. Moreover, the bulk of
scientific opinion seems to be opposed to the somewhat
widely spread notion that the climate is changing
and that the rainfall is becoming less regular, although
the destruction of forests, and other short-sighted
interferences with the natural drainage of the country
for which we are responsible must have altered the
distribution of moisture in the soil. Carelessly con-
structed railway embankments blocking drainage ehan- ,
nels have turned healthy places into malaria-infested
districts ; and although the miracles worked by our •
systems of irrigation must strike every observer, we do j
not yet know what penalty nature is to impose upon us \
for them. Our “ improvements ” have altered the
natural economy of India to an extent which we can only

104 THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN

guess about at present. All this must affect the general
fertility of the country.

; A mere recital of recent famine statistics is enough
to appal one. Going no farther back than 1890 we find
that in that year there was scarcity in several districts,
and in the following year the affected area was wider.
In 1898-7 there was famine in Madras, Southern and'
Central Bombay, Bengal, United Provinces, Central
Provinces, and the south-eastern corner of the Punjab,
whilst the Native States of Rajputana and Hyderabad
also suffered. Scarcity was felt in certain fringing
areas. Again in 1899-1900 famine visited Bombay,
the Central Provinces, Rajputana, Baroda, Hydera-
bad, and scarcity accompanied it in neighbouring dis-
tricts, Almost continuously from that time to last year
there ; have been short crops in most parts of India,
scarcity in the Deccan and parts, of the Central Pro-
vinces, and famine in Guzarat. In 1907 drought again
played havoc in Northern India. In the 1896-7 famine

807.000 square miles were affected, with a population,
of 69,500,000. The figures for British India alone were

225.000 square miles and 62,500,000 people, of whom
4,000,000 were on relief at the height of the distress.
In British India the mortality of this famine has been
estimated officially at 750,000 souls. 1 The famine which
followed on the heels of this affected, an area of 475,000
square miles bearing a population of 59,500,000, of
whom 6,500,000 were receiving daily relief at one time.
The British territory affected was 180,000 square miles,
with a population of 26,000,000. The Commission
which reported upon this estimated ' that in British
India about a million people had died as the result
of this infliction and the cholera which trod upon its
heels.

T In studying famine, one must begin, by grasping what
■itis.and how it presents itself. Even in' the- worst times
now there is no scarcity of grain in' the famine-stricken
districts, ".except, as in the case of Darbhahga in 1906-7,'
1 Imperial Gazetteer , mw edition, 1907, vol. iii., pp. 490-1.

THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN 105

when the famine was caused by floods which cut off
the afflicted district from the rest of India in the early
stage of the outbreak* At the very worst time in the
Guzarat famine of 1900, when people were dying by:
the score every day in Ahmedabad, it was shown by
the official returns that there was tc sufficient grain to
last for a couple of years ” in the hands of the grain
dealers of the district. It is, therefore, not a scarcity
of grain that causes famine. As a rule, ' prices rise, but
not to the level they used to reach. The railways have
stopped that. Imports supply- failure of crops. The
last serious scarcity of grain was experienced in the
Orissa famine in 1865-7, and that which followed in
Rajputana in 1868-70. Since then famine has been
caused by a destruction of capital and the consequent
cessation of the demand for labour. High prices coincide
with low wages and unemployment, and people starve,
in the- midst of plenty. 1 Hence, the first to' suffer are'
the landless labourers who have no sayings, no credit,
and nothing to mortgage. The advantage they have is
that they are. pretty free to move about and - are not
prevented. by .pride or caste from accepting any' relief
that' may. be going. Little removed from them are the
small cultivators. They are generally in the hands of
the money-lender, who is unwilling to advance them
more '.money; they have no reserve of grain, so that
they have to purchase the high-priced foodstuffs on
the market ; they are unwilling to go away in search of

1 As guides to the formation of accurate opinions regarding
famines, I. may quote some sentences from tlie Report on the Administra-
tion of Famine, Relief in the United Provinces during the Years 1907-8.
Prices rose rapidly in the second week in January, and imports from
the Punjab and elsewhere came in at the rate of 50,000 tons a week
(p. 27). Estimate that the cultivator in 1908 lost £28,000,000 worth
of food crops (p. SS). Trade in food-staffs active during famine, and
private enterprise provided sufficient supply for market (p, 122).
Difficulty is high prices, not scarcity (p. 1 24). If prices had been as
low as they were thirty years before, there would have been no need
for relief over the greater part of the area (p. 151). The labourer who
spent one and a half annas on food in 1906 had to spend two annas for
the same amount in the autumn of 1907 (p. 152).

106 THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN

work, ' The advantage they have Is . that they may
obtain from the Government some loan to dig wells. 1
Then the high prices reduce the value of the rupee, and
the middle classes suffer severely in consequence. This
increases the indebtedness of the people, and in famine
times extra staffs have sometimes to be engaged to cope
with the rush of applications for registration of deeds. 2

In one way railways have added to the difficulty,
and have widened the apparent famine area. They
are, in the first place, the means by which the export
of Indian grain is carried on. No one who has not been
in India and has seen, nothing of the working of the
system, from the great granaries at Kurachee to the
'agencies in every little village which has a surplus of'
anything that can be sent away, can grasp the colossal
nature of this export organisation. One firm alone;
■sucks, the sap of Indian life like a tropical sun, leaving,
dust' and barrenness' behind. A week or two after
harvest India’s surplus wheat and rice have passed
into the hands of dealers, and when the next monsoon
fails she starves. The cultivator used to have reserves.
He has practically none now. He has a little money,
"but. not much of it, and it is just this turning every-
thing into cash which is the source of so much of Ms
troubles. When in the old time famine overtook India,
if the famine-stricken tract was in dire distress, neigh-
bouring tracts were little affected, owing to the lack
of communication preventing famine influences from
affecting neighbouring markets. Nowadays the means
which relieve famine -widen its influences, because
scarcity in one part .immediately puts up prices in other 1
parts and deepens poverty in them. The poison which
used to be virulent and local is now milder but is carried
farther through the system.

1 Of tlie male diggers employed on the relief works in tiie Sailar
charge there were twice as many cultivators as landless labourers, and
of these cultivators 12 per cent possessed holdings of 4 bighas [about
an acre] and upwards, — Ihtrbhangci, Famine Report, 1906-7, p. 10.

2 Ibid., p. 11, where it is stated that the increase in registrations
was 53 per cent.

THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN 107

I am fully aware that on this point there is official
optimism-, and that a reply is at hand in the shape of
the statistics of export. The charge is that India is
depleted after her harvests. The reply made is that
when India’s harvests fail exports drop. Of course
they must. It is not the figures of export that have a
bearing on this point but those of import-, and we find
these rise enormously, and immediately there is scarcity.
For instance, in the Review of the Trade of India for
1908-9 1 it is stated regarding the import of grain and
pulse ; 44 The trade temporarily assumed important

dimensions last year in consequence of the scarcity
prevailing in parts of the country. 55 ' The import of
rice in 1907-8 was 3718 tons, inf 3908-9 82,730; of
wheat 12,788 and 28,948 respectively. This shows
that ' India • is depleted every season, and other figures
show that when prices rise savings are destroyed.. No'
reason for official optimism is. less well furnished' than
that based upon the growing exports of Indian grain;

These ,, changes ' in Indian economy, it is said, . have
to corne because they are incidents in, the path: of ' pro-
gress. "That is only,' the obiter 'dictum of our Western
arrogance and blindness. We live' under the delusion
that there is no emancipation except through the dis-
integration of social organisation. In the old days
there was an organisation which made the interde-
pendence of the various functions in social life real.
Exchange was in the first place internal to the com-
munity. There was a common wealth. The despised
money-lender was a necessary social functionary.
Now .that is broken up. The individual cultivator has
been dragged into wide relationships. He gets price
for Ms products and he pays his obligations in coin.
The economic community is broken up. Exchange- of
service has given place to purchase of service. Produce
is taken a, way and the price of it remains, and this price
is subject to many fluctuations in value to which the
produce under the vanishing economic conditions was

x Cd. 4913. ■ lyv

108 THE land of the poverty-stricken

not subject. The money-lender from being a social
functionary has become a parasite. Individual capi-
talism is proving itself to be even more destructive of
the best that is m India— where its operations are
alien to the civilisation of the country — than if ■
proved to be in the West, where it has not been so alien.
Ihe ways of Western progress are not the ways of
Eastern progress. It is simply absurd for us to” look
complacently on and see the ancient methods of credit
upset the ancient protections from famine swept away
and the ancient balance and economy destroyed • and
rejoice that through this ruin, progress Se s ‘
vAnd what are we putting in the place of them ?
Railways are of little use. Even their benefit depends

?s hSLTT WC glVG \° the conu »drum whether it
is better to have severe famine in limited districts or

an increase of prices and an increased poverty over
wide areas round a stricken centre where the famine
may be less severe than it would otherwise be. This
, h JPf s m the P roeess of substituting the cash nexus
P ersoil . al nexus ’ of enthroning the pinchbeck
vntues of egotistic and capitalist thrift in the place of
a ruined system of social thrift, mutual aid, and per-
sonal credit. We have made the money-lender andthe
gram forestaller great, and from being public function-

exploiters admmistratlon has made them self-seeking

In the strenuousness of their efforts to provide relief
wien famine is upon the land, our officers are above
praise. The story of famine relief in India will shine
with a bright glow after many other achievements of
ours have ceased to emit a beam of light. I have heard
detailed criticisms regarding the expenditure of the
and f.fotimes overworked and overworried
officials have failed to be tactful or even polite Thus
it is stated in the Report of the Orphan movemenUn
f W3t - h th ® , Alya Soma j (1899-1900), that

in R 6 01 J] at yC f Whllst reseuin S orphans

m Rajputana, we addressed representations, memo-

THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN 109

rials, and applications to the Commissioner of Ajmere-
Merwara, to the Agent of the Governor-General of
Rajputana, and to the Deputy Commissioner of Beawar,
but our applications never elicited any replies,” But
what of that ? Man is not yet perfect. And yet their
relief work, souniike the ,d:}arity which India has been
accustomed to dispense, has of itself had a solvent
effect on Indian social organisation. It tended to
pauperise the people, to make them, lose their self-
respect ; it damaged the status of some, it destroyed
the morals of others. Indeed, the coarsening and
degrading which come from relief works and labour tests
are just the same in India as they are at home, 2

Also payment of relief in coin tends to keep up the
price of com and allows the grain dealer, to exact more
than he otherwise would from the people. He lias first
of all the advantage of taking the corn of his ■ creditors
—often at his own price — and then of having a. market
for it prepared by the Government through relief works, '
In. Some of the recent famines doles have been given
in grain" by- the Government and not in coin. This, is'
ail improvement on old methods, and indicates that
the, force of circumstances is driving the Government
to relieve in Mud, and thus to tackle the question of
grain storage.

Over and over again Government has been warned
that its duty is not to relieve, but to prevent, and that
the only way to prevent is to strengthen the economic
position of the cultivator mainly by extricating him
from the financial meshes in which he lives, and to give
support, so far as is possible, to the old economy by
encouraging its methods of mutual helpfulness. When
scarcity comes and prices reach famine levels the
Indian administration should boldly step in and prevent,
where necessary, exporters and forestalled leaving
the land more desolate than need be. Maximum prices

1 Relief work in India is generally the making of new roads and
the repair of old ones, of embankments and of tanks, and the excava-
tion of new tanks.

HO THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN

for grains should be fixed, and not a ton should be
fallowed to leave the country except by the sanction
of"' Government, A steadying of prices' is by- far and
away the best kind of famine relief that a Government
can establish in India. This would not interfere with
legitimate exports or ordinary trade ; it would prevent
the whole economy of India being dominated by the
interests of usurers and exporters, who act as exploiters
of the country and its people.

If the controversy regarding land assessments and
famines is entering upon a new phase owing to the
changing social economy of the country, we must con-
sider what that change means, with a view to guiding
it as far as possible in the interests of the people.' To
the eye, the change is' noticeable in smoking factories,
.crowded .coolie quarters, extending clocks ;' but; some ■
of its' less prominent features are not the least important.
The movement in co-operation, best illustrated by
the, agricultural banks, is one of the most significant.'
These banks, advocated in a memorandum sent by
Sir William Wedderburn to the Government of Bombay
and accepted by the Government of India in 1884, but
.rejected, by the Secretary of State — -Lord Wolver-
hampton, then Mr. Henry Fowler — were begun in 1004,
and at the present moment are to be found in every
province ;in a state, of more or less vigour. Twenty
valuable years have been lost, however, and the poverty'
.of the cultivator is so much deeper. 1 Thus passes the
1 These Societies are now passing out of their experimental stage.
The Hon. R. W. Carlyle, who presided at the twentieth Annual Con-
ference of Co-operative Credit Societies at Calcutta in November,
1000, stated that during the year the mini her of Societies had risen
from 1057 to 2008, the members from 140,160 to 184,807, the working
capita] from 44 lakhs to 81 lakhs, the expenditure from 47 lakhs to
■;,84 ; -lakhs. ■ In Madras, Burma, mud the United Provinces they can
command as muck capital as they require ; in Bengal and the Punjab
the Societies are most numerous, though in the United Provinces ike
membership and the working capital are both largest. Repayments
'■ ^are..'. •'■excellent, : 'fraud us slight, liquidation'; is ■ rareh', This 'system 'of.
mutual credit is to be extended. Weavers* Banks have just been
started. The danger ahead is that too much haste will be shown in
founding them, as was the case in the native State of Mysore, but this
dim ger dim inishe s e. v e ry y ear.

THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN 111

old cultivator. Thus the regularity and organisation
and forethought of the West arrive, and the social and
economic habits of thrift and averaging, upon which
alone a democratically controlled Government rests,
are creeping in. A Delhi Mogul or a Poona Peshwa
could rule on fluctuating incomes ; a Calcutta Cabinet
needs something very regular and very certain. The
error and injustice of averages are being minimised.
India is systematising her expenditure and her con-
sumption.

As part of this silent revolution this also is happening.
All the guide-books tell the traveller that India is a
cheap country, but he does not find it to be so. Prices
have risen enormously. Wages, tips, hotel bills are
all on an ascending scale. I quote the following table
from the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society for
September, 1909, showing the increase in the cost of
living in India through sixty years :

1865-87 .
1888 - 4 ) 8 '
1800-4
■ 1905 to date'

JPitcb.

. Index Number
72
100
, 118 '
125
185

The figures for the past three years are ;

Years- :
1900

1907

1908

Price
Index Number :

. 107

. 178

. 202

Much is being written about this and very much more
talked about it. Commissions and Committees are
being demanded to inquire into it. Some say it is
caused by exports, some by imports, some by factories,
some by tourists, some by the changes which have
been made in the value of the rupee, some by the exces-
sive coining in which Sir Edward Baker is, in some
quarters, alleged to have indulged when he was Finance
Minister, some by famines and scarcity, some by rail-
ways, some by the “ cornering ” of dealers. The real
truth is probably that it is owing to them all together,

112 THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN

because they are all part of the organic change creeping
over India. This view receives support from the fact
that since 1860 not only have prices been rising steadily,
but local variations have been ceasing to count, and
except at exceptional times have tended to become
uniform all over India.

India is undergoing expansion, factories are arising,
the area of cultivation is widening, opportunities for
work are multiplying, and the increase in population
has been checked by famine, disease, and scarcity. 1
Moreover, the old method of exchange is being sup-
planted by a new one, in which money is being used.
The blacksmith and barber, as I have pointed out, are
to a less extent village functionaries sharing in village
production and village wealth, and are becoming per-
sonal servants, charging fees for their services. Thus,
impediments have been put in the way of a free ex-
change of labour, inducements have had to be offered,
and consequently competition and the laws of supply
and demand have come into operation prices on the
world’s market have influenced prices in India.

This is to be permanent. The operations of agricul-
tural banks, if they were only carried on on a larger
scale, would tend to destroy the power of the bania
or money-lender, who, holding liens very commonly
on crops, is in a specially advantageous position for
cornering markets and keeping up prices against the
consumer. But costs in exchange are to increase as
coinage is to be more and more used for measuring the
value of services, and as Western industrial methods
obtain a firmer grip on Indian industry.

This is affecting the economic position of the classes
in India and will be a disrupting element in its social
organisation. For instance, all those working for fixed
salaries or fees, all traders carrying on business in old
ways, and the middle classes who do not engage in

1 The, Census increase between 1881 and 1891 was 13 - 18 per cent,
between 1891 and 1901 2-41 per cent ; since 1901 there have been
scarcity, famine, and much disease.

THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN 118

trade, are becoming relatively poorer. The business
man who adopts new methods, and who is fitting him-
self into the mechanism of the export trade, is becoming
richer. His origin is very often in one of the lower
castes, and the higher castes look on his rise with dis-
gust. The cultivator is in a more doubtful position.
If he is cultivating for export he gets better prices than
he used to do — though it must be observed that the
lion’s share of the benefits goes to the middleman ; but
when he has to buy for consumption, he finds that his
high income has a low equivalent in terms of necessaries
of life. The cultivator who tills irrigated land in ex-
porting districts and whose tenancy is of considerable
size is undoubtedly improving his status and is hoard-
ing wealth ; the class cultivating small holdings from
which no advantage of export can be reaped is either
stationary or is being ground down. In Bengal there
is a specially wealthy landlord class, and this class is
getting richer and richer. There still remains the land-
less labourer, and on the whole he seems to be improving.
He finds it more difficult to live when out of work, but
when in work — and there are still thousands of small
jobs, to which he can turn his hand — his higher wages
more than compensate him for dearer goods. And to
all and sundry who care to enter the mills there is some
opening as yet. The distance which workpeople go for
factory labour is extraordinary. In a jute mill which
we visited outside Calcutta, for instance, we were shown
a big block of two-storied dwellings inhabited mainly
by coolies from Madras. Further, in estimating the
tendencies in wealth distribution, we must not overlook
the changes in social habit which are creeping over the
people and changing the values of incomes. Better
clothes are being worn, cigarettes are beginning to take
the place of the hookah, alcohol is being more widely
consumed, shoes are more general, umbrellas are be-
coming more common. The people’s wants — too many
of them debased — are becoming more costly to meet.
As evidences of increased prosperity I place little reli-

114 THE LAND OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN

ance upon such facts. These things no more show
prosperity than expensive weddings or extravagant
funerals. They simply show that the people are running
after cheap luxuries, that their sources of satisfaction
are changing, that they are spending more money upon
themselves.

Thus the general conclusion to which I have come
regarding the movement of wealth in India is that India
is rapidly becoming richer as a whole ; that a compara-
tively small but exceedingly rich class is being formed
of bankers, mill-owners, and landlords, the majority
of whom are Hindus of the merchant castes, but with
a strong representation of Parsees, Jains, and other
special sections of the Indian Community ; that eco-
nomic rent is increasing ; that the aristocracy and mem-
bers of the old trading and middle class are being
reduced ; that the cultivator is being divided, and at
one end is becoming better to do, at the other worse off ;
that the industrial population which either has land but
supplements its income in factories, or has no land at all
and has to live solely on wages, is, for the time being,
slightly improving its position, but is gradually drifting
into the same position as the European industrial popu-
lation ; that, after an interval when the demand for
labour will be not less than the supply, and when an
appreciable percentage of the labour employed in the
mills will be independent because it has other sources
of income — in this case the land — the labourer will find
himself in a weaker position, and will be protected only
by such trade combinations as he can in the meantime
create. These combinations will probably be of a kind
midway between the castes of India and the trade
unions of Great Britain.

Thus, the great transformation deliberately desired
and striven for by the Western minds who have been
squeezing India into Western moulds comes upon India
— certainly not for its final benefit.

AWAKENING INDIA

At the beginning of the century a breath of life blew
over the East and it became conscious of itself. The
exploits of Japan bade it hope and lift up its head,
whilst the revolution in Turkey and the subsequent
events in Persia taught the Mohammedan communities
that the future was coming to them too with change
as a gift. 1 It was also the fiftieth year after the Mutiny,
and some minds were affected by that. The youth in
particular were moved. To the old, these things were
the menace of a lightning gleam ; to the young, they
were the dawning of a day of hope.

The effect was at once seen in a revival of Indian
national life. 2 It was by no means the beginning of that
life, for Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Iswar Chandra Vidya-
sagar, Bankim Chandra Chatter ji had lived and died.
It was that crisis in it, however, which corresponds to
those awakenings in human life when some event seems
to reveal a man’s being to himself, to remove from his
thoughts the unreal attractions which used to mislead
him, to transfigure him so that reality becomes his pur-
suit. There are no beginnings, only moments of awakened
consciousness. It has been said that “not within the
last 2000 years at least has the Hindu intellect under-
gone such a revolutionary change as these last seventy-
five years have brought.”

1 I deal with the Mohammedan awakening in chapter vii., where
it fils in most c >n renierrth .

2 A serious element in the Nationalist movement to-day is the per-
sonal factor, but I simply note it in passing. The recent elections
show how much personal antagonism divides the Indian camp, and
how the pleasure-loving characteristics of some of the wealthier
Indians are to influence the political future.

1 15 • ■ vfcMitKS

116 , AWAKENING INDIA

He who inquires into Indian movements finds himself
invariably going along the ways which lead to the
religious life. All Indian movements from bomb-throw-
ing to personal purification begin in the sphere of re-
ligion, and this is particularly true of Nationalism. ^ In
the Punjab one finds at every turn politics and religion,
organically connected. In Bengal the Partition (Octo-
ber 16) and the Boycott (August 7) celebrations begin
with bathings in the Ganges and visits to temples —
they are politico-religious festivals. The leader of Bom-
bay Nationalism, Mr. Tilak, has a reputation as a re-
ligious leader quite as marked as his reputation as a
political leader. He revived festivals like the Ganpati,
which had fallen into abeyance, and he used them for the
singing of audacious political songs, and the stirring
up of the religious and political imagination of the
people. The Ganpati festival at Poona has become a
troublesome political demonstration mingled with some
debased traces of its religious origin. I found every
religious sect pregnant with new life, from Amritsar
to Benares, from A j mere to Calcutta. Arabindo Ghose
has made the connection between his devout Hinduism
and his strenuous Nationalism clear. Man has to fulfil
God, he has written, and that is only possible by fulfill-
ing himself, this again being possible only through
nationality. On this religious conception rests his belief
in Swadeshi and his desire to see the English predomi-
nance in India ended.

The reason is not difficult to find. The life of India
is religion. Religion regulates every movement and
every moment of existence. The gods are not remote,
they are near at hand. They hear the tinkling of a bell
hung in their temples. Every day the people enter
their presence and offer them garlands and posies of
flowers; they walk about with the marks of their
deities on their foreheads ; their heroes were devotees ;
their immortal ones were saints. One gets completely
■ibeiyiMered by the vast crowd of religious teachers whose
remained' on the lips of ' these men for ceil-

AWAKENING] INDIA r & 117

turies. Take up any one of the many religious books
written by Indians, and see the crowded galleries of
philosophers, of teachers, of ascetics in which the Indian
still wanders and worships. Everything that India has
been, everything that she dreams of being, she asso-
ciates with her temples, her philosophies, her schools
of religious learning, her devotion to her gods. And
now, when the Indian youth sees his benign mother
no longer sitting in ashes on the wayside but enthroned
in splendour and majesty on a seat of authority, it is
as a goddess that he pictures her. India is indeed the
mother goddess. The worship of maternity, which runs
like a golden thread through nearly every one of his
popular faiths, inspires the Indian’s “ Bande Mataram ”
and makes it seditious by the abandon of its filial wor-
ship, the whole-heartedness of its childlike allegiance to
the soil of his birth, and the luxuriant growths of tradi-
tion and sentiment which it bears. He returns to Ms
gods and to the faith of his country, for there is no India
without its Faith, and there is no Faith without India.
The whole of Indian culture is pervaded with assump-
tion that India, the land, is sacred. To this extent
Indian Nationalism is Hinduism. 1 No Mohammedan
can enter its Holy of Holies, where politics are trans-
figured by the presence of the gods into religious faith,
and where the struggle for civil freedom is transformed
into the worship of the Hindu genius.

Certain of the strongest Nationalist sections amongst
the Hindus — those in the Punjab in particular — accept
the Mohammedans as fellow citizens with a grudge.
Particularly bitter is their resentment against the con-
verted Hindustani Mussulmans “ who do not worship
Hindustan in all her aspects, and have transferred the
lien of their patriotism to Cabul or Persia or Turkey or
Arabia.” These “ are aliens in spite of their being born
in Hindustan and lived for generations in India — they

1 It is interesting to note that c< Bands Mataram was written
to voice anti-Moslem feelings, although it has now lost that sig-
nificance.

118 AWAKENING INDIA

are the unwashed children, of the soil,” 1 It is the Aryan
who has arisen through the modem Nationalist move-
ment. It is Indo-A.ryan consciousness, with all its his-
torical associations, which demands expression in India
to-day.

This puts obstacles in the way of unity. But I have
also been taught to regard these obstacles with some
doubt. It is hard for an Englishman to discount statistics
and outward appearances as they must be discounted in
India. The spirit of Hinduism is wonderfully persistent.
The prodigal son wanders back to his father’s door.
Beneath many veneers of faith, of worship, of culture,
the Hindu personality persists. Let any one take up
the biography of Swami Upadhyay Brahmabandhab,
the Catholic convert, the Christian propagandist, the
lecturer at Cambridge and Oxford, who never really
forsook the worship of Shri Krishna, who participated
in the Shivaji festival, whose Catholicism was but
Hinduism plus a cross, and whose message to his coun-
trymen was : “ Whatever you are be a Hindu, be a
Bengali ” — and see how Hinduism can persist. From
that extraordinary demonstration in modem conver-
sion let him turn to reports on the habits of Hindu
Mohammedans, and from that let him study the history
of foreign invasions of Hindustan. They all point the
same moral; they all warn him against placing too
much reliance upon census figures regarding faith. Hin-
duism is the pivot round which the life of India turns.
It is a reservoir of prejudice, of feeling, of sympathy, of
power as yet almost untapped, but if tapped capable
of displaying a force like a swollen river which has burst
its banks. It is in the worship of his gods, in his reli-
gious devotions, in his following the footsteps of his
gurus that the Indian seeks after his mother, India.
The Matripuja — thejworship of the mother — has become
a political rite. This is why the extreme Nationalist

! 1 Address, to Indian Association at Lahore on May 1, 1908, by
-Srimati Sarala Deri Chaudhrani, published, in The Hindustan, of that
date. . ,

AWAKENINGS- INDIA ' : 119

has no programme except a demand for elementary
rights, no ideas of what would follow upon a. self -ruling
India. He is a religious votary, not a politician.

Until one has grasped the significance of this deifi-
cation of India one has not mastered the psychology
of the unconstitutional or force movement. The Swaraj 1
of April 1, 1909, wrote : “ This motherland is a good
deal more to us than what might be usually regarded
by even astute European students as a mere apotheosis
of a geographical entity. It is the symbol of our nation-
idea . . . the Divine Idea, the Logos, which has been
revealing itself through the entire course of our past
historic evolution and is the soul of it. This Divine
Idea, this Logos, is the Deity whom we salute with the
cry ‘ Bande Mataram ’ ! The Motherland is really a
synthesis of all the goddesses that have been, and are
still being, worshipped by Hindus.” This may sound
rubbish to the West, which has no form in which it
embodies its idea of God : to India it is the simplest
and most ordinary idea. It transcends patriotism as
far as religious fervour transcends egotistical emotion.
It is this connection between the stormy strife of to-day
and the calm decrees of the Eternal that makes the
Hindu Nationalist feel that the day of glory is not far
off for his country. How it is to dawn, he knows not.
What is to happen by noonday, he cares not. India is
coming like a bride arrayed in her garments, laden with
gold and precious stones. India is immortal. The
things which are important to the Western politician
are of no consequence to the Hindu Nationalist.

Before one tries to understand the extremist move-
ment of whatever degree, one cannot do better than
assimilate the spirit of the Bkagavad Gita, the most
moving and haunting of all the sacred books of India.
In its slokas, glowing with a divine light, the Indian
discovers the way of self-sacrifice. It is the gospel of
action, of action stern, and terrible done by the body
and the passions, whilst the possessing soul is at peace
1 The Swaraj, edited by Bepin Chandra Pal and published in London.

120 AWAKENING INDIA

in the presence of the Eternal, It is the divine manual
of how duty is to be done with no thought of conse-
quences, except that it is the will and thought of the
Eternal. “ The contacts of matter, O son of Kunti,
giving cold and heat, pleasure and pain, they come and
go impermanent; endure them bravely, O Bharata.
The man whom these torment not, 0 ' chief * of • men,
balanced in pain and pleasure, steadfast, he is fitted
for Immortality. 55

The Blessed Lord said :

Time am I, laying desolate tlie world,

Made manifest on earth to slay mankind !

Not one of all these warriors ranged for strife
Eseapeth death ; thou shalt alone survive.

Therefore stand up ! win for thyself renown,

Conquer thy foes, enjoy the wealth-filled realm.

By it they are already overcome,

Be thou the outward cause, left-handed one.

Drona and Bhishma and Gayadratha,

Kama, and all the other warriors here.

Are slain by Me. Destroy them fearlessly.

Fight ! Thou shalt crush the rivals in the field.

Bathed in this ocean of self -surrender, and ever filled
with the music of the Divine Voice, the Indian’s heart
beats with ecstasy, and he goes forth to do his work.
There is no limb of the vernacular press, no uncontroll-
able Amriia Bazar Patrika , or Bande Malaram , so
dangerous, so seditious, as the 66 Song of the Blessed
One. 55 We can conceive of strenuous times when, with
a hymn like “ O God, our help in ages past 55 on their
lips, our people went out gladly to die. Some Indians
are now living in that time. The Indian assassin quotes
his Bhagavad Gita just as the Scottish covenanter quoted
his Old Testament. And the Gita is more cruel in the
devotion and self-sacrifice it inspires than the most
awful of the Old Testament passages which have been
brooded over by the austere fanatics of our own history*
It is this inspiration dazzling, human reason into
■ ;;Blindness i that, leads astray, the youths who ' have-' cast
constitutionalism to the four winds, and who have

AWAKENING INDIA 121

entered upon the dark ways of assassination, hoping
thereby to reach emancipation.

The physical force movement originated in Poona,
where a proud Brahminism mingles with an equally
proud political spirit, and where both have come under
Western influences. But it almost immediately shifted
to Bengal, where the religious spirit is more volatile
and fanatical. Snugly lodged in Paris, safe from the
responsibility of his own words, and careful that he
never risks his own neck whilst he prompts others to
risk theirs, is one who is supposed to be the responsible
inspirer of assassination. That is a mistake. He does
not inspire the youth of India. Theirs is another in-
spiration. Our education of the Hindu has set going a
political evolution in which anarchism is the sequel of
oppression. 1 But the real extremist leaders never cease
to warn their followers against the futility of these
methods. “ It is the East that must conquer in India’s
uprising,” wrote one of them in Karmayogin of March
26, 1910. “ The divorce of intellect and spirit, strength
and purity, may help a European revolution, but by a
European strength we shall not conquer.” And yet
one incessantly hears from officials that the antidote to
bomb-throwing is moral education ! The futility of f
much of our official criticism of Indian events surpasses ■-
comprehension.

I was told to read a novel called Anandamath, by
Bankim Chandra Chatterji, which was published in
Bengali in 1882 and has been translated at different
times into English, 2 because it would give me an idea
of the sentiments which move the anarchists — both the
bomb-throwing and the dacoity sections, if, indeed,
they are not the same. It is said that this story sug-
gested to some of the dacoity sections their methods of

1 Am extremist Indian paper referred to bombs as f *tbe coarse and
vulgar garb of European revolutions,” This view must also be kept
in mind., because before the religious life of India issued in political
assassination it had to be secularised by Western philosophy,

2 My copy is entitled The Abbey of Bliss, is translated by Nares
Chandra Sen-Gupta* and is published in Calcutta.

122

AWAKENING INDIA

action. The novel relates to the rising of the Sannyasins
in 1778-4, to which Warren Hastings makes several
references in his correspondence. Chatterji elevates
these fakirs into national heroes devoted to their coun-
try, whom they worship as their mother. In the novel
appears the now famous song, “ Bande Mataram.”
The devotees, led by a Sannyasin called Satyananda,
passed their time in a dark, desolate wood, from which
they issued to plunder and destroy the foreign rulers.
They lived in an ecstatic fervour, the disciples of Vishnu,
the soldier guardians of The Mother. They called them-
selves The Children. Their battle-cry was “ Hail,
Mother,” and “ Hari S Hari ! ” (one of the names of
God) ; their song, the “ Bande Mataram.” Their
battles and their devotions are the theme of the story.

The intellectual sides of the national movement are
being well looked after. Three reviews of distinction
voice Indian Nationalism : The Indian Review, pub-
lished in Madras, which, curiously enough, has become
one of the most important centres for the issue of poli-
tical literature ; The Hindustan Review, which is the
most severely political and moderate, published in
Allahabad; The Modern Review, the most literary of
the three, which shows all the characteristics of the
Bengal spirit and is most in sympathy with the left wing.

In addition to these, fugitive literature in a con-
siderable quantity has been issued to explain and in-
spire the movement. Biography has been specially
cultivated both in English and the vernacular, and the
whole world has been drawn upon for heroes. History
has also been written, like Ranade’s History of the
Mahrattas and Dutt’s Ancient India ; and I had from
the author, lately a judge in Bombay, but now the
President of a Nationalist organisation, an interesting
book with some pretension of learning on Epic India.
Novels like those of Mr. Dutt and (of the last genera-
tion) Bankim Chandra — to whose Abbey of Bliss I have
just referred — and also of Ratan Nath Sarshar, written
in various vernaculars, are widely circulated, whilst,

AWAKENING INDIA 123

amongst poets, Sheikh Mohammed Igbal’s Hindustan
Hamara is in some vogue. In the literature of the active
movement Bengal leads. Some of its writers have the
command of perfect English, and ever since the days of
Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Bengali has been used as a
medium for controversial literature.

It is also in Bengal where the revival of Indian art
has begun. There still lingers in my mind the winsome
music of Robindranath Tagore sung to me by women’s
sweet voices on the river above Calcutta. It was sung
to songs, written by this poet, of yearning and tender
love for the land and its life, its mornings and its even-
ings, its riches and its poverty, its faith and its hopes.
In fact, in Bengal one feels at once a palpitating life, a
Bohemian spontaneity, an idealism, exceedingly trouble-
some no doubt to the Government and exceedingly
dangerous to youths of enthusiastic and devotional
temperaments/ But it is living. It is independent.
It is proud of itself. It challenges the foreigner and
draws inspiration from its own past.

I have heard this revival described as a reaction, and
in a sense it is, because it is the people turning in upon
themselves for inspiration after having rushed to adopt
foreign ways. That, however, is not a reaction in the
ordinary sense. Fifty years ago, when the Indian first
awoke to the advantages of modern education, he ran
to an anti-Indian extreme. He flouted his owm past
and shocked his own present. He thrust his Western
heresies under everybody’s nose. He ate meat osten-
tatiously, shouted the fact in the streets, and got drunk
to show he was a modern. He adopted an eclectic faith
more Western than Eastern. He denied the divine in-
spiration of the Vedas and the divine origin of his pro-
phets, and quoted David Hume. He prided himself in
being an adopted son of the French Revolution. He
started the Brahmo Somaj (1828). 1 But the aggressive
spirit of revolt exhausted itself. Attempts such as those

1 “I have never found one among them,” wrote Macaulay, “who
could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth

124 AWAKENING INDIA

of Keshub Grander Sen were made to bring the modem
movement back to a loyalty to its past. Finding him-
self despised and rejected of Anglo-Indian men, the
Indian was thrown back upon himself. The historical
spirit returned. He began to value his own past and to
find his own dreams refreshing. The revival of Oriental
studies in England and Germany pleased him. Recent
events added lustre to the East. Driven into his own
territory, he discovered that it was a desirable land.
Religion, poetry, music, literature, art, were revived
no longer in imitation of the West, but faithful to the
East. He ceased to be content to copy and began to
think of creating. That is the explanation of the Bengal
movement.

The same thing is happening elsewhere. I have
described the Arya Somaj in the Punjab ; but I know
of no literature produced in the more matter-of-fact
North-West — which argues and hates but does not see
visions. The Punjab is austere, solid, “ dour,” as they
would say in Scotland. It produces political pam-
phlets but not literature. In Bombay the same spirit
is at work, the difference being that the Mahratta Brah-
min has a keener sense of the historical. In the United
Provinces the political movement as yet is of minor
importance ; even the Arya Somaj there is absorbed in
the educational and philanthropic work of the Society

The one great contribution of the West to the Indian
Nationalist movement is its theory of political liberty. 1
Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Individualism and Lord Morley’s
Liberalism are, as it were, the only battery of guns

tlie whole native literature of India and Arabia.” The “modem
Indian ” of those days was willing to accept that libel.

1 “ We must not be ashamed to admit that we received our early
political activities from the teaching and example of our foreign rulers.
The first inspiration of freedom came to us from English literature and
European thought, though our own special race character and national
culture have made material contributions to the development of our
latest civic ideals. ”—~Swaraj, April 1, 1900, I have read' scores of
political articles in Extremist papers* and the most striking thing
about them is how Western they are.

AWAKENING INDIA . 125

which India has captured from us, and condescends to
use against us.

One of the most surprising factors in the present
agitation is the women. I have heard of several who
have actually taken a public part on the platform, and
in every aspect of Nationalism women are active. We
heard everywhere that in the Zenana politics are dis-
cussed; a" meeting of Indian women was held to
protest against the deportations ; an address of con-
gratulation was presented by women to the mother of
the Editor of Yugantar when he was imprisoned, and the
old lady made an aggressive reply. Our own experience
is that many women are following very closely what is
going on, that they hold bitter opinions regarding
Englishwomen in particular, and that they are respon-
sible for a good deal of the resentment to which men
give expression. The Indian woman is silent and re-
served ; she is shy and almost unapproachable, but she
is a person of a will and of parts all the same.

|/ Two generations ago we said we should welcome this
awakening. We urged India to it ; we prepared for it.
Now that it is come we are afraid. We spy upon it ;
we deport its advocates ; we plan to circumvent it.
This change on our part is of fundamental significance
in determining the form assumed by the awakening of
India, although the “ man on the spot ” does not see
that it ought to matter at all. The fact is, our official
attitude has been the chief factor in determining the
course of the Nationalist movement. It has been an
attitude of friendship at first and of bitter opposition
later.

The history of the National Congress is a history of
the Nationalist movement. Started in 1885 by men
who were rich, who were Liberals, and who had been
educated in Western w r ays, it was purely political.
Its demand was for enfranchisement and for responsi-
bility. It was never anti-British ; it has always con-
tented itself with demanding a measure of self-govern-
ment under the British Raj. But it gave birth to a left

126

AWAKENING INDIA

wing, which gradually gained an independent position
and drew away from it. The Anglo-Indian adminis-
trator lost his opportunity. The Congress, which ought
to have been accepted by him as a useful critic, was
regarded by him as an irreconcilable enemy. He re-
sented it. He misrepresented it. He handed it over
to the mercy of its left wing. The doctrine of a Sinn
Fein kind of self-help, the dream of the political boycott,
were encouraged by the blunders of the Government.
The first indication of a split was shown at Benares in
1905 as the result of Lord Curzon’s new policy ; next
year at Calcutta an open rupture was barely avoided.
The demand for reform ceased to satisfy the Nation-
alists, largely because it found no sympathy from the
bureaucracy. The boycott developed into a system of
political action. The old Congressmen became Mode-
rates, and what were at first shades of opinion became
rival camps. The Congress itself became mean in the
eyes of the young generation.

Bengal, where the agitation was most alive, was then
rent in twain. The partition was not merely a blunder :
it was an indictable offence. Lord Curzon’s personal
feelings entered into it in a most reprehensible way.
He devised it, as the evidence shows most conclusively,
to pay off scores. By a division, which neither adminis-
trative convenience, nor historical tradition, nor ordi-
nary sagacity could justify, he divided the Bengali-
speaking people in such a way that, though by far and
aw'ay t!r e largest group of people in the undivided Bengal,
in neither of the new provinces did they have the influ-
ence they ought justly to have. Moreover, the partition
was accompanied by a series of administrative and
judicial acts Which definitely ranged the Government
against the Hindu, and taught him that our adminis-
tration declined to do justice to him. Mohammedans
proclaiming strife from the housetops were hardly
cautioned ; Hindus whispering their grievances were
treated as criminals In the Barisal riots in the spring
ol 1906 the authorities were as much implicated as the

AWAKENING INDIA ; 127

Catholic Church was implicated in the St. Bartholomew
massacres or the Government of Russia in the recent
pogroms. With the partition, the Curzon regime reached
its height, and was instantly challenged by the appear-
ance of real sedition. It is of the greatest importance
to note that the date afterwards given in the Alipur
bomb trials as that when the murderous conspiracy
commenced was the day when Lord Curzon did his
worst act in India by partitioning Bengal.

Thus the path was paved to Surat when the Nation-
alist movement as such broke away from the movement
for political reform. 1 A new ideal had come into con-
flict with the old. Since then efforts have been made
to unite the Congress. But the time for union has not
yet come. A Congress in which the followers of Ara-
bindo Ghose sit side by side with those of Mr. Gokhale
will be a debating society. The Indian political move-
ment for the time being has split, and its two sections
receive inspiration from different ideals. The Moderate
policy is to accept the present position and extend Indian
rights under it, trusting to events to determine the ulti-
mate position of India. The Nationalists refuse to
aecept the present position, and all their thoughts and
actions proceed upon the assumption that they should
have no part in it. This was put epigrammatically by
a writer in the proscribed Swaraj thus : “ What we
want is not appointments under the Government [this
reference being to the methods of Congress], but only
the right of making them.” The Karmayogin, the
recognised organ of Mi 1 . Arabindo Ghose, defines the
dispute in this way : “ Nor is it a question of adhesion
to, or secession from, the British Empire. That is an
ultimate action which is too far off to form a question
of practical polities or a subject of difference. The
dispute is one of ideal, whether we shall aim at being a
province of England or a separate nation on an equality

1 Some Congressmen will dispute the accuracy of tin's antithesis,
because they claim that Nationalism is still voiced by the Congress.

128 AWAKENING INDIA

with her, carrying on our ancient Asiatic development
under modern conditions.” 1

When the position is explained the colossal mistake
of official India in encouraging Nationalism by pouring
out foolish criticism on the head of the Congress can
readily be seen.

The difference in practical policy between the two
sections centres round the boycott. Most Anglo-Indians
confuse Swadeshi and boycott and take them to mean the
same thing. They do not mean the same thing. Swadeshi
is the policy of patronising, as far as it is practicable,
home products, and the Government itself has adopted it.
It is followed more or less consciously by every people.
“ Support home industries ” is a good advertisement
for goods in whatever language it may be printed. It
is simply an attempt to maintain a national industry,
and is a recognition of the fact that, everything else
being equal, the home workman, the fellow citizen, has
first claims upon the consumer. In India it is also an
attempt to keep alive the native industrial arts that
have been fading away through several generations.

The boycott, however, has a totally different signifi-
cance. It is political in its origin, and it was meant to
effect a wider and deeper issue than merely the con-
sumption of goods. Its origin can be traced as far back
as 1901, when it plainly influenced the thought of the
left wing of the Congress. Its home was in Bengal.
But it did not become an important thing until Krishna
Kumar Mittra proposed that it should be temporarily
adopted, so as to convince Lancashire that Bengal was
in deadly earnest in its opposition to partition. The
boycott is the politico-economic fruit of the Curzon rule.
It was proclaimed at a public meeting held in Calcutta
on August 7, 1905, a day which is now kept as an annual
festival. At first the Extremists, w T ho ought to have
welcomed it, opposed it, because it then seemed to them
to be an item in the Moderate policy of bringing pressure
to bear on the Government to grant reform ; but they
1 Editorial in issue of December 11, 1909.

129

AWAKENING INDIA

very soon detected the general drift of the movement,
and whilst the Moderates stick to their original purpose
and regard it as being merely temporary, the Extre-
mists have directed the movement, have succeeded in
associating it with their wider policy of passive resist-
ance, and have found in the lukewarmness of the Con-
gress to this policy one of the offences which, keeps them
away from Congress meetings.

Amongst the influences that have done most to make
Indian. Nationalism a menace has been the Press, and
a sentence or two must be written about it. Nothing
reveals more plainly the ineffectiveness of the Indian
Administration than its attitude towards sedition. It
allows the Anglo-Indian press to publish day by day
“ highly objectionable and provocative articles against
the children of the. soil , 5 ’ 1 which ' not only incite those
children to reprisals but stuff the minds of the adminis-
trators themselves with stupid prejudices, and blind
them to the real nature of their responsibilities. But
this is done. with impunity, whilst the Indian reply is
regarded as,. sedition,, as stirring up racial enmity, as,
bringing the Government into contempt. The whole of
the special Press Law of India, and more particularly
the latest attempt to strengthen- it, must fill with de-
spair. the heart of any man who understands political
agitation.

Two members of the Anglo-Indian press have been
'conspicuous for their offensiveness, so conspicuous,
indeed, that had the Press Law been impartially ad**
.ministered, in India.. the editors- of.- both 'would have
enjoyed the privilege of calm reflection within prison
walls. I refer to The Englishman of Caleuti.a and The
Civil and Military Gazette of Lahore. The latter used
to be edited by a Jew, whose "patriotism was of the most
demonstrative type* but recently it has fallen from its
high, estate ; It seems to be feeling the effects of age.
When under its late editor, however, ft. was an active

1 Presidential Address to the Third U 4 P. Conference, by Ganga
Pr vs mI v m a

AWAKENING INDIA

agent In alienating the Indian from the official and in
stirring up racial strife. The Englishman also Is feeling
the effects of age, but, like a decaying old virago, it still
shows its teeth. One goes to its columns for the most
Ignorant criticisms published in India on Indian affairs.
Day by day it freely publishes its pernicious impudence
and inflames feelings on both sides. I was assured by
journalists and officials that it now u represents , no
influential section of the community,” as The Bengalee
had it, and one is very glad that this should be so. The
Pioneer is only a shade better. It is superior, it is Con-
servative, and it never does an English Liberal or an
educated Indian justice if it can help it. The Times of
India is a little better than The Pioneer , although, again,
Its position is that of the immaculate Anglo-Indian,
irreproachable, .above criticism, I may have been -.un-
fortunate, but I never saw a really sympathetic '' article ' 1
on Indian affairs in it, whilst it gave amusing "evidence
that it was sadly mesmerised by the jingle of “ Pagett,
M.P.” As an extremist pro-official paper it would foe
admirable if it had as a competitor an organ like, the old
Statesman , but it holds the field alone, and its methods
do all the more harm. The Statesman has been for long
the most, valuable interpreter in India of English opinion
to the Indian, and the great services.it has rendered to
our rule in this respect when other papers 'were bourn
’ dug and spluttering their Imperialist and racial , impel*- ■
tinences cannot be too highly prized. Recently, how-
ever, it has changed, and the erstwhile independent
organ has become a suspiciously steady apologist for
everything which the Government says and does. It
would really be a calamity if The Statesman were to
abandon Its old position for good and take its stand side
by 'side with such papers as The Pioneer or The Times'
of Indm — a position which for the moment it occupies,

: '.Any, one with an intimate 'knowledge of British affairs
who finds himself in 'India will 'probably" be/a, mused at
much of what he sees in the Anglo-Indian press by way
of opinions, but his hair will stand on end at the cables

AWAKENING INDIA 181

sen! twice each day fur flic enlightenment ol Indian
readers on British affairs. The news is often unim-
portant ; the information is as often as not quite in-
accurate ; political leanings are apparent. The Indian
news sent over to us is of the same kind. This work of
news transmission, though of such Supreme importance
to both India and ourselves, seems to be entrusted , to
nn oibee boy of Conservative leanings without much
Conservative intelligence, and one comes across the
most grotesque opinions in consequence. The morning
Handed an absurd story about the Budget appeared in
all She press as, the leading item of information. Dav
alter day trivial but significant mistakes continued to
appear. Even such simple news as the relations be-
£ vccn . ! l \ e ^ Iiners federation and Messrs. Burt and
h enwick hau to be cabled to India in a stupidly inaccu-
rate form. .Thus, British news and the Anglo-Indian
newspapers occupy a most unenviable position amongst
the mischief -making influences of India.

1 : 1,e . VC!, ;‘Y - v }'f certainly not all that can be

desired. lhe Hindu resents being told that he has not
the historical sense, but the accusation might be proved
in a. Court of Law. His mind is steeped in ideas. What

in f eV 1“ t to , him ? filing but a moment

m the Eternal, nothing but a ripple on the disturbed

C ;? ° f spmt, . ,a J rea3it f • This Strange quality carries
wi h it appropriate weaknesses. Hard, cold fact does
not make sufficient impression on such a mind. It plays
with fact, and turns it round, explains it in this wav
and m that, and finally, perhaps, explains it away al-
together I he historical faculty discovers the Eternal
m the fact and does not dissolve the fact into the nothin«-
ness of the Eternal But the historical faculty is also
the, faculty of political criticism, and the Western,
taking up the vernacular press, will properly complain
of a want of candour and of rigid sticking “to fact, of
too much imagination, of simile and metaphor which
are used so much as to become misleading; of. in con-
sequence, a wordy exaggeration. One finds this m the

1S2 AWAKENING INDIA

very best of the Indian papers. I have several times
had to pause and marvel at the extraordinary faculty
shown by writers in these papers for leading their readers
by wordy aeroplane journeys to conclusions very much
in the heavens. In every paper is a resentment of
British rule which nothing can eradicate, and which
bites with acid criticism every action of the Government.
This, moreover, is often expressed grandiloquently,
and in language the full force of which the writer appar-
ently has not understood, but which must influence his
readers. That this is provocative and may be dangerous,
no one denies ; but it is all included amongst the troubles
of governing a subject race that can read, write, criti-
cise, and imagine things.

| The danger, however, is not to be removed by Press

'Laws or by repression of any kind. In its extreme form
it must be visited by penalties, but it is its habitual and
moderate use which amounts to a menace. That cannot
be stopped by magistrates. To give them the power to
do so is itself as great a danger to the peace of India as
are the objectionable articles. Legitimate criticism
would then be suppressed, as the Punjab authorities
are trying to do to-day. What is wanted is a calm and
patient ruler, who turns a deaf ear to panic cries and
short-sighted advice, and who goes steadily on doing
justice and keeping a close companionship with edu-
cated public opinion of a constitutional character. It j
is a serious reflection on our administration rather than '
on the Indian character that any responsible official ;
should ever think that papers like The Bengalee, or The I
Amrita Bazar Patrika, or The Punjabee, are seditious
or objectionable. They have written in wrath, they ;
have sometimes misrepresented us, and they have said .
hard things, but neither of them at its worst has been j
so great a menace to our peaceable rule as The English - \
man and The Civil and Military Gazette when by our
officials they are supposed to be at their best.

. . , ' , GEE AT BRITAIN IN INDIA ; .

When death came to withhold the hand of Satyananda
in Chatter ji’s Anandmnath he explained to the heroic
leader of the Sannyasins that it; was not only vain but
wrong for The Children to keep on fighting. The Moham-
medan was not to rule India. His power had been
broken. But the Hindu rule was not to be established
then. And when Satyananda wept with disappointment*
the Inexorable One said ; u What will happen now will
be for the best. There is no hope for a revival of the
True Faith if the English be not our rulers . 55 That True
Faith had become corrupt, and could not be restored
except by a return of the Hindus to “ objective know-
ledge .’ 5 64 Imbued with a knowledge of objective science
by English education, our people will be able to com-
prehend '• subjective truths. Then there will , be no
difficulties' to- the .spread, of the True Faith. It will then
shine forth of itself. 1 Till that is so, till the Hindus are'
great again in knowledge, virtue, and power' — till then/
the English rule will remain undisturbed.”

In the forefront of any impartial estimate of what
Great Britain has done for India must be benefits con-
ferred. The Nationalist movement may now challenge
our occupation and a stern judge will record many
blemishes, but the historical fact remains that England
saved India, Long before the East India Company
built a factory, the old India was vanishing, rent asunder
by internal strife, crushed down by foreign armies. We
found not a Government, but shifting camps, not rulers,
but captains of horse. Conquerors were rising and fall-
ing like corn stalks when the wind blows over the fields,
and. there was apparently no end to these ups and downs.
The Moslem rule had broken Hindu authority ; it in
turn had been shattered ; the Mahratta ascendancy
never had a foundation. We came, and consolidation
followed on our footsteps. Diversities of race' and

133

184

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

religion found liberty, and the spirit of a .united India ■
'found rest' to its harassed wings. 'Under our protection
India has enjoyed a recuperative quiet. If we cannot
say that our rule has been a necessary factor in the
development of Indian civilisation, we can say that in
view of historical Indian conditions it has been a neces-
sary evil. .A foreign conqueror had to come, and no
nation in the world, either at that time or to-day, could
have done the work nearly so well as we have done it.
Be our mistakes what they may, no alien rulers would
have avoided them. Many of them could only have been
discovered after they were made. Great Britain, under-
going a most searching self-examination and confessing
as the result that she has committed many sins against
India, need not accompany , her confession , with the
shadow of an' apology to the rest of the world. 1 To her-
self she may say, with Sir Hugh Clifford : 44 God' forgive^
us for our sorry deeds and our generous intentions 55 ; for
the fact is that no race can govern another quite justly, '
46 1 am most happy to say, 55 said the President of the
■Reception Committee responsible for arranging the
Madras Congress (1908), 44 that the general feeling, of
all .classes 'of His Majesty’s' subjects throughout India;

' towards, the British Government is one of deep gratitude
for the many blessings conferred on India, the most
important of which are security of life and property,',
liberal education, medical and famine reliefs, sanitation
and facilities of communication.’ 5 Perhaps beyond
these blessings should be placed those moral reforms such
as the forbidding of sati, of, human sacrifice, of female in-
fanticide — horrors never sanctioned by pure Hinduism,,
but which had become vigorous fungoid growths upon it,
"' „ :, On the other side of the account, however, is the great
loss to India that this peace has been bought at the price
riot . her own. initiative. That is the' real' objection to all
; attempts to govern a country by a benevolent despotism,
^; : The;;gpvcfrfed are crushed down.'' They 'become' subjects
•who obey, not citizens who act. Their literature, their
. art, their spiritual expression go. They become the

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 185

hewers of .wood, in their national industrial economy.
They degenerate to the level of copyists. They cease
to live. This is particularly the case when it is not only
one'' nation which holds another in - subjection'.: but one
civilisation which attempts to mould and control another.
And when we recall the riches of Indian civilisation and
the social organisation which it lias handed down from
time ini memorial, 1 this loss of initiative and of self-
development is greater as regards India than almost any
other conn try. One day I stood in Delhi looking at some
of the wonderful remnants there seen in stone of the
Mogul times. An Indian friend was with me and pointed
out what changes we had made in the masonry. 44 You
have jerry-built, you have whitewashed, you have de-
stroyed,” said lie. Then raising his head as a wider
meaning to bis words entered his mind, he repeated with
a smile ; 44 You have jerry-built, you have whitewashed'.,
you have destroyed.”

• ■ At;the,rp.Q:t of, most of qur, mistakes is the assumption'
tha| India f Iiould copy us. We are guided by standards
of personal and social virtue which are the' products' and '
•expressions' of our own historical experience, but which
are alien from those of India. And yet we place ourselves,:
the conquerors, on a pedestal as the one example for
men. We started Western education under the impres-
sion that the result would be that Indian superstition
would vanish and a race would appear fit for representa-
tive institutions and endowed with all the best qualities
of Englishmen. When that happened we imagined we
would, welcome the issue and with gladness allow it to
have its natural political outcome. If we go through
India to-day with these declarations of two generations
ago in mind, our hearts will be weary and sad. Western
education has undoubtedly done much for the Indian.
It has destroyed his isolation of mind and it has opened

1 On account of this, the Indian gives hut a limited credit to as for
some of our achievements. Of, “The Indian revenue administration
twenty-two hundred years hack does not fall short of the best ideals of
the civilised British Government of to-day. India, by C. B.
Vaidya, m.a,, llb,

186 GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

the way back for him to his ancient intellectual triumphs*
Above all, it has put school-books in his hand containing
as elegant extracts poems by Byron, Brutus’s speeches
from Julius Ccesctr and similar things, and it has thus
imparted to him the spirit which craves for nationality, :
and has taught him the principles upon which that
craving must proceed to translate itself into definite po-
litical demands. It has thus not only given biographies
of Garibaldi to India but has revived the worship of
heroes like the Maharana Pratap, the lion-hearted Rajput,
who resisted the Mohammedans as Hereward resisted the
Normans. But our educational methods were begun by a
generation and by men who had no historical sense and
whose' sociological theories w r ere based upon the assump-
tion that every mind at the beginning is a blank tablet
upon which anything can be written. Therefore our
methods -were too absolute. The' education we gave' was
not a graft upon Indian civilisation, but a transplanted
slip of Western civilisation. 44 Our efforts, 55 said Macau-;,
lay, 44 ought to be directed to make natives of this coun-
try thoroughly good English scholars. 55 The break
caused, was too violent. The educated was uprooted.
He was taught to look upon his past with contempt and
to be an alien amongst his own people. He has had to re-
volt, against us to regain his faith and his historical affini-
ties. ■ The language in which he spoke was also botched,
and by insisting that his higher education should be given
in English we have cut that off as it were from his original
being and have introduced a dualism into his mind.

■ *"The same influences have been at work on Indian art.
It was' first of all neglected, and in some of its industrial
aspects literally crushed out. In villages it still survives,
though greatly,, weakened. Mr. E. B. Have]], the late
■Art; Adviser to the Indian Government, accused us of
".gross, neglect and actual discouragement. 1 . The Govern-:
raent has no Oriental imagination. It is dull and utili-
tarian, . ecpnoniical in its idealism, and extravagant only:

1 Bee Ms interesting article in The Hindustan Review , April, 1909,
and Ms paper read to the Royal Society of Arts, London.

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

on its monetary side. One can only feel melancholy to
hear it pride itself that it has provided cheap cotton at
the expense of the old industries. It is blind to the im-
portant items on the debit' side of that account. One
shudders whilst going through the wonderful palaces
built like the fairy palaces of our youth and furnished in
the trashiest upholstery displayed in London shops
where newly married suburbans are attracted to furnish
on the hire system. When at last Lord Cursson began to
talk of art it was as a vulgar Philistine, He has been
described as a builder of Rhine castles at Simla and a
patcher-up of ancient Mogul palaces* He chose restora-
tion instead of preservation of ancient buildings, and,
consequently, whoever visits places like Delhi, Agra,
Fatepur Sikri, and similar shrines, has his sensibilities
jarred by patches of new masonry, painting, and inlay-
ing in imitation of the old that has gone , 1 Not until the
industrial ■ revolt of Swadeshi and the boycott was, en-
tered upon was there .a return of any importaBce to 'the
rich, industrial arts of India. But once again it can be
claimed that a few Englishmen redeemed our reputation.
Men like James Fergusson, General Cunningham, Sir
George Bi.rd.wood, and finally Mr. Havell must always
be thought of when Indian art is mentioned. Moreover,
when driven into a, corner, we may defend ourselves by
this thought, that the whitewash of British Philistinism
laid over the palaces of Delhi was not so destructive to
Indian, art as the fanaticism of Aumngzebe.

1 The source of most of our failures is: a lack of syxn-
f pathetic ins agination, -which shows itself in a policy of
transplanting English views in social ethics on to Indian
soil* The "result is confusion- — confusion in the Indian
mind and confusion in Indian society ; and from this
confusion with its disappointing results arises the dis-
couragement; of so many of our officials which drives

^ J By good lurk, some of Ids work is worthy of unqualified praise.
What ho has done, for instance, to the Sliah Jehan marble summer-
houses on the bund of the Jake at Ajmere must he praised without
stint, hut there he could do little meddling. He simply cleared away
English debris in tk shape of buildings.

188 GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

them within their own shells, fills their hearts with
despair that the Indians will “ ever do anything,” and '
gives rise to that separation of European and Indian
.life which every one who has not come under the de-
teriorating influences of India deplores. The two races
misunderstand each other, and Indian society makes the
misunderstanding inevitable. If similar social causes do
not produce similar results in England and in India, the
man who is working on the assumption that they will,
and who meets with unexpected failure, will only in a
rare number of cases condemn his methods ; as a rule he
will condemn his material. We have assumed that India *
would respond to Western methods, and we have been f
disappointed ; that is the key to nearly every big prob-
lem which. w r e are facing in India to-day.

In the chapter on 44 The Ways of the Native ” I used
this key to explain the false witness and'- the . serious' '
hindrances that have' been put in the way of the ad-
ministration of British justice in India. 1 I have also
shown how Western methods of economy, with their'
characteristic feature of averaging income and expendi-
ture, have inflicted injury upon the Indian, cultivator* :
I should like to reinforce these examples by another.

Let us consider that important personage in village
economy, the bania, or money-lender. We have come to
despise him, to curse him, to lay at Ms door the bulk of
the economic woes of the people. We talk so incessantly
of the 20 and 80, 50 and 60 per cent which lie imposes,
of the liens he establishes on crops,' of his transactions
as a grain merchant, of his mortgages' and foreclosures, '
that he has become the villain in the village tragedy.
■In the old village economy, however, the bania was a
respectable and a useful man. .Tie performed a leading
function in the commercial life of the people. He was
The, capitalist who made savings, available 'for individual
use, and who made possible both those elaborate cere-

1 , Another interesting inquiry is into crime, when it can again be
:^sS^h: : tT;^tTne of .its most-' prolific sources is the break-up- of the,ci>M-;:v
inanity spirit and discipline.

189

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

monies which Indian religion demanded and those re-
coveries from famine which Indian climate made neces-
sary. Nominally even then he was a usurer, but he
was kept in strict restraint by the public opinion of the
village. He was not independent of the goodwill of Ms
neighbours. Public opinion menaced him on every
transaction. He was indeed a public functionary not
acting in accordance with his own personal will but in
reality following the village will. He was part of a com-
munist society ; and if he did not play his part honestly
lie might have to suffer having his house broken into,
his papers burned, and a village verdict passed on him
that it served him right.

We came to the village. We did not understand its
spiritual or its economic basis. We regarded the bania
as a Western capitalist, just as in the Permanent Settle-
ment of Bengal we regarded the tax-collecting agent as
a landowner. We surveyed lands and laid down definite
boundaries ; we created individual landlords; we
established regular courts, which applied to India the
property laws of the West. We thus elbowed the money-
lender out of the village economy, and made him a
separate individual dealing with property securities
belonging to other separate individuals. To add to the
misfortune of this social disruption, it came at a time
when the trading classes were becoming rich by the
building of railways and the extension of the grain mar-
kets, and lawyers were becoming numerous as the result
of a false education. The money-lender was beset by
temptations to grab land, to be the master of the culti-
vator, to become a usurer of the worst kind. Thus we
trace in an unbroken series of transformations the evo-
lution of this person from a beneficent social functionary
to »n objectionable individualist exploiter, owing to the
mistakes of the Western administrators.

The fact that we have been making mistakes has
gradually dawned upon us, for when, for instance, 80 per-
cent of the cultivators in the United Provinces have
mortgages hanging about their necks, the situation has

140

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

become serious, and we have been trying to undo the
evils by the passing of Courts of Wards Acts— which;
enable the Government to take the 'estates of u incap-:'
able ?? persons under its own charge for the time being,
and so rid them of debt and other hindrances Deccan
Agriculturists 5 Relief Acts.; and, above all, a series of
provincial measures, varying in their provisions, .and
culminating in the Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1900,
which prohibited the sale of land in the Punjab except
to members of agricultural tribes.

> j But excellent as our intentions may now be, and
guided as they may also be by a glimmering knowledge
of the mischief we have unwittingly done, we have de-
stroyed the old social and economic organisation of
India ; we cannot restore it now in its unity and har-
mony, and we have not begun to succeed in putting
anything in its place.

Here another path of inquiry opens out. What has
been the effect of our propaganda of the Christian faith
in India ? Since the third century Christian missionaries
have worked here ; for three centuries the Catholics
and for two the Protestants have, been labouring in this
field. With what results ? This is a very difficult ques-
tion to answer, and is, moreover, one which must be
answered differently in different districts. Apart from
the statistical answer that only I per cent of the Indian
population is Christian, one or two conclusions may be
accepted as representing the general opinion of the
Indian and Anglo-Indian alike.

The first is that the number of conversions has been
exceedingly small, and that the converts themselves
have been mostly unimportant Preaching . in ■ the
bazaars has become like the Sunday meetings in Hyde
' Park. How little direct effect Christianity has had on
the individual Indian can easily be seen from conversa-
tions .with him and from reading his religious literature. 1

2 “Do you not,” we asked some Indian ladies one day, “fear that
if yon send your daughters to convent schools they will he made
“Oh no/’ they 'smiled :in ; v reply)" “we-are' ii6t : ;afraid : : : pf
your religion. They implied that they were quite superior to it.

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 141

But there are two missionary .activities which are
having a considerable effect upon India. The first is the
Medical Mission and the second is the Missionary School
and College. Both indicate a form of propaganda which,
though indirect, is really changing India. Many mis-
sionaries have given up the notion that India is to be
Christianised by individual conversions, and look to a
change in the mental points of view of the people. The
“ preaching of Christ and Him crucified n is therefore,
as it were, postponed, and the greatest energy is thrown
into a transfusion of Indian feelings, thoughts, and mental
axioms, with Christian feelings, thoughts, and mental
axioms. 1 This has much to be said for it from the point
of view- of scientific sociology. The life of a people as a
whole and important departments of it cannot be
abstracted from the rest and changed. Hinduism pene-
trates Indian life as consciousness penetrates the body ;
and if any fundamental change in creed is to be effected
over a large area, the pervading spirit must be attacked
Thus we, find Christianity in India engrafting itself upon
the active life of the country, upon the minds of the
people,- influencing them insensibly, leavening them. ;
and the effect is in the main twofold. A universal
humanitarianism is being understood by a people so
divided by caste that humanity has ceased to exist for
them. Thus the people are being taught the oneness of
the human soul— and the equality and justice which
arise from that — brotherhood, care for all, service to
mankind. On the other hand, the Christian propaganda
is a valuable aid to those native Indian forces making

1 OF, a paper by the Rev, 0. F. Andrews, of the Cambridge
Mission;, Delhi, in the November issue (1909) of The Indian Interpreter,
from which I fake these sentences : a I am led more and more by ray
missionary experience to regard the conversion, of -India, not as the
aggregate of so many individual conversions, but far rather as a gradual
process of growth, and change in thought, idea, feeling, temperament,
conduct— a process which half creates and half .reconstructs a truly
Christian religious atmosphere, Indian at its best, and Christian at its
best. . * . This does not of course mean that 1 cease to believe in the
conversion of the individual, but 1 seem to see other and more silent
processes of the spirit, which lead, it may be, to more distant, but to
no less important results.”

142 GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

for monotheism and reality in worship, although, to the
educated and philosophical Hindu, Trinitarianisra is a
stumbling-block. In the discipline which the Indian has
to undergo in order that his religion may result in ethical
conduct, Christian influence, if wisely directed, is to
play a great part.

The Christian ethic, acting with Western, political
ideas, has also raised the condition of the outcast in
India. To the outcast the missionary has specially
appealed, and from the outcast he has won most of his
converts. The last Census Report has shown that the
- Christian gains of recent years have been almost exclu-
sively from aborigines and outcasts. The effect is only
beginning to be seen. The outcast himself is beginning
to question his position. The Brahmin has behaved
brutally to him, and he is allowing himself now to hate
the Brahmin. Round the privileged castes a flood off.;'
resentment is silently rising, and it will rise much morefjf
quickly as elementary education spreads in India. This| |
explains why there have been some remarkable demon-
strations of the outcasts against the Nationalist move-
ment. To many of them Indian Nationalism means Brah-
minism, and they look to Great Britain for their eman-
cipation. This also explains why at every Hindu social
reform conference the position of the outcast is seriously £
discussed and proposals made for his inclusion in the
Hindu community ; why the Brahmo Sornaj and the
Arya Somaj are paying special attention to him; why
various Hindu associations are turning their eyes upon
him ; why Islamism gains so many converts from him.
Nor do we see this liberalising and equalising movement
working in the outcasts alone, for in India to-day there
is a considerable hubbub over claims made by inferior
castes to be ranked higher than they have been. At
meals, in schools, in public activities, even in religious
exercises, one now notices in India the intermingling of
castes ; the great strides towards the emancipation of
women marked by the remarriage of widows and the
raising of the age of marriage, the propaganda amongst

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 143

the dancing-girl castes in Madras, the founding of really
efficient educational establishments for girls, the break-
ing through of the Purdah system, signify a great deal ;
and these are the products of Western thought and
Western criticism routing from the mind of India the
evil spirits which took possession of it when it descended
from its ancient greatness and its religion oecame de-
based. Nor are the higher castes themselves sheltered
against this liberalising spirit. They are freer to go and
come, to eat and drink, to travel and converse than ever
they were, and their ceremonies of expiation are becom-
ing more and more formal and nominal.

In a category all by themselves stand the material
improvements wrought upon the land. Curiously 7
enough, our greatest failures in this respect have arisen
when we sneered at the Indian method of doing things.
We sneered at his plough and his cultivation, and when
we tried our own we failed, and often only gave him
cause to laugh at us. During our visit we frequently
heard of farms tilled on Western methods that had be-
come almost barren. 1 But we are now going about our
improvements in a scientific, experimental way, basing
our changes upon Indian experience, and good results
will soon be reaped. A history of British agriculture in
India would follow, both in the spirit it would reveal
and the failures it would record, on lines parallel with
those of our general administration of the country 7 .

The railways, to which most people turn with pride,
are also but moderate successes from the Indian point
of view. They r now form a vast network of communica-
tions, but a considerable mileage was developed with
imperial military needs primarily in mind, and has, in
consequence, been a serious burden to the country.
Only quite recently, with the completion of the lines
approved by commercial strategy, has the dead weight
of those made to meet the requirements — often only
supposed requirements — of military 7 strategy been over-
come and the railways made profitable.

1 Tiiis recalled to us similar tales aud experiences which we
gathered some years ago in South Africa. ;

144 GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

Our most conspicuous benefit has been irrigation. 1
One does meet people in India who are doubtful ol
, the final success of this. They tell .you that the irriga-
tion canals are disturbing the natural drainage ol the ’
country;, that they are water-logging the land, that"
they bring fever with their water. 2 Irrigation en-
gineers and doctors quite willingly admit that there is
something in these fears, and are bending their energies
and their skill to prevent the worst consequences from
happening.

But leaving the future alone, every one who wanders
over, an irrigated region must feel as though he were’
beholding a miracle. We chose the Chenab Colony,
with its, capital, Lyallpur, founded in 1896, and now a
municipality with twelve councillors, as the place where
we were to see the effects of water on the desert. In this
district only a few years ago a solitary tree was famous
as a landmark. The land was barren but for useless
scrub and for short-lived fodder which sprang up after
the rains, and on account of which the land paid a graz-
ing rent of about one penny per acre. Across it roamed
primitive nomadic peoples, who subsisted largely on
cattle-lifting, and whose -ways of life are well shown in
a proverb which was current amongst them; u My
child, if you cannot steal you will die of hunger. 55 Am"
escort was required for caravans and cattle droves cross-
ing this territory, and a regular, scale of. payment for '
protective services at the rate of 2 j per cent of the value
of the property guarded was accepted. A fee of ten
rupees was paid to the tribesmen to pursue and attempt
. to recover a stolen camel or buffalo.

All that is changed. A canal constructed as, an inun-
dation channel in 1887 was made into an irrigation
canal, and the country was ready, for colonisation at the
beginning of 1892, The cattle-lifter is now handling

1 In 1906-7 the total area irrigated from public works was
22,225,000 acres.

•■These’ criticisms are now held' to he, seditious by;tlie’;.0overiimeat,;:
| judging by the speech of the head of the Home "Department when
■ introducing the new Press Law Bill (1910).

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 145

the plough, and is being taught the allurements of the
law courts. We saw some of them hovering in the pre-
cincts of the Lyallpur Court House being fleeced by the
new predatory band of pleaders and writers. An area
of 3800 square miles— with another 2000 within range
— of which 8000 are already allotted to cultivators, has
been irrigated. 1 In 1901 83,000 people, drawn from
congested districts of the north and north-west, 2 and
grouped in 1418 villages, had settled upon it. They
came with all their village communities — washermen,
barbers, carpenters, smiths, sweepers — and settled in
their new surroundings. Discouraged at first by many
circumstances, not the least of -which was a virulent out-
break of cholera, but encouraged by a good crop, they
took root, and now they tell you merrily of their inte-
resting experiences, “ I came on a camel,” said one of
the cultivators to me, “ and now — — ” He left his sen-
tence to be finished by a significant sweep of his hand
across the landscape shaded by trees and rich in growing
crops. I came across a ballad sung by a blind wanderer
in the streets of Lyallpur in 1899. One of its verses
translated into English runs thus
Be bold t lie gi 1 1 ? * >f my Lord,

, To the Siklb Jats have beengiven. lands.

Till now, up to their ankles in poverty,

So, they prosper before mine eyes.

Drink wine and roam with curled moustache.

Hear yon the tale of Lyallpur,

Where grain and water abound.

The canal runs by the gateways.

Trees have been planted in rows,

And green grass, comes sprouting up.

Railways are running through the district 1 and grain
markets have been opened at different centres. Though
we were not there in the grain season, the large market
at Lyallpur w r as busy with traffic- The export of wheat
from the area was 8,124X07 maimds in 1908, and each
acre yields on the average 20 to 80 maimds. 3 In addt

1 The irrigated plain of the Punjab comprises an area of 12,000,000
acres, winch are now free from the risk of crop failure,

2 The population in 1891: was 70,000 ; by 1900 it was 858,000,

A in a Hid is 82 b.

146

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

tion to that, cotton is grown, 567,212 maunds having
been exported in 1903. The land revenue amounts to
one million and a quarter rupees, and the canal dues
range between eight and ten million rupees. That is the
Government income from the colony, and it certainly
does not represent more than a fair economic rent.
Truly we can say this of the place : “ The desert shall
rejoice and blossom as the rose.”

But behind all merely physical or political improve-
ments and influencing their value lies the consideration.
What is the spirit of the rulers ? What is the social
atmospheric influence of the men who are representing
us out there ? The answer given to those questions is
more important than the balance of material gain or
loss which our occupation of India carries with it. It
is more productive of political peace and unsettle-
ment.

Up to the present moment the Government has been
an autocracy, a despotism. In 1858 the control of In-
dian affairs passed into the hands of a Secretary of State
assisted by a Council ; in 1861 a kind of legislature was
established in the provinces ; in 1892 a semblance of
representative authority was given to these Councils ;
in 1909 this semblance was made more of a reality. But
the real governors of India are the Commissioners and
District Collectors, who are administrators and judges
in one, and "who are supported in all their doings by the
whole system to which they belong, and which recog-
nises them as being itself. On the governing and ad-;
ministrative authorities representatives of the subjects;
have been in a minority ; their powers of criticism have
been strictly confined within the narrowest limits ;
Government officials have held the offices which carried
real power- — for instance, the chairmanship of municipal
bodies with a few exceptions like Bombay. Thus In-
dians of self-respect have generally kept aloof from these s
bodies, arid municipal administration has fteen never ;
rtputvof hands of officials. Provincial Councils ha\ r e
been on the same footing, and the Viceroy’s Council has

| GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 147

[ been no better. Up till now there has been hardly a
r shadow of self-government in India,
r < Under these circumstances good personal relations

between the officials and the people were of the utmost
importance. But in this respect things have been going
; from bad to worse. When India was six or ten months

|t .way from London the men who went out either as

agents for the Company or officials of the Government
felt themselves cut off from home. They lived with the
people and adopted many of their habits, from squatting
I on the ground to hookah smoking ; they took wives
from the people. Their rule was far from good, their
administration far from pure. But. it had something
sympathetic in it. With the annexation of India by the
Government a change for the better took place. India
was still isolated from Great Britain : the men who
went out there still lived in the same style as the people,

» the purifying influence of Parliamentary sovereignty
improved the administration. There was less exploita-
tion and more administration. Then came the Suez ,
Canal and the steamship. Competitive examinations
supplied a new set of men drawn from a new social I
stratum, few of whom began with any interest in, or i
connection with, India, the majority of whom w r ent up j
for the examination because Indian service offered good .
pay, a respectable status, and a desirable pension. They ‘
then brought out their women folk. I-l'ill stations had
to be invented, and the other distracting problems of
separated families arose. The white woman in India
enormously complicated the difficulties of government.
She became responsible for the extravagant follies of
Indian life, and she embittered racial antagonism by her
narrow-minded prejudices and ignorance. In later days
the Imperialist spirit came to heighten the little pinnacle
upon which so many officials lived, to increase their
superior offensiveness, and to repel to a greater distance
the selbrespeeting Indian. Or I might summarise the
situation. In a different way. The first generation of
British rule was one of rest. The country w T as exhausted

148 GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

and required a breathing space and security. It found
both under the East India Company. The second gene-
ration lived on the memories of the first, and the fruits
of peace, chiefly education and a copying of the ways of
the conqueror, began to ripen. The third was a genera-
tion advancing in Western ways and of governors con-
templating with calmness a national self-government as
the issue of their protective activity. All this time the
rule was personal. The governors knew the governed
intimately — more particularly the ruling and educated
families of the country. Then the division came. The
results of their education policy made the governors
doubt, because it produced criticism, rivals, a claim for
equality. They fell back upon the uneducated mass, and
the gulf between the old families and the educated
people on the one hand and themselves on the other
widened. The two civilisations began to crystallise
apart. The Indian drew to himself his own elements,
the Anglo-Indian drew to himself his elements. The
Indian refused to show' deference as of old (by leaving
his carriage, for instance, at the outer gate and walking
up the drive), whilst some of our collectors have failed
to receive visitors standing and others have not had the
manners to ask visitors to be seated. The English used
to honour Hindu festivals in Bengal (just as the Maha-
rajah of Gwalior keeps Christmas out of respect to the
British) ; but that, I was told, is a thing of the past. The
assumption of everybody who went to rule in India used
to be that he would have to pick up what languages
were necessary to enable him to speak with the people.
But the arrogance of these modern days began to assume
that that was quite unnecessary. “ The number of
officers who spoke the vernaculars with any facility,”
said Lord Curzon, “was very much smaller than fifty
or twenty-five years ago, and the number devoting
themselves to anything like a serious study of the litera-
ture of the country was diminishing year by year.”
The Bishop of Lahore, Dr. Lefroy, whose splendid suc-
cess is due solely to his faculty of understanding the

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 149

people and the civilisation which surrounds him, has
voiced the same complaint. By a law as inevitable in
its consequences as any law in mathematics, the present
political agitation arose.-

The separation between governed and governor
reached its widest point during the Curzon regime. So
offensive to all sections of Indian opinion had this Vice-
roy become that even his good deeds created resentment
and suspicion. If any one man is responsible for the
present anarchism which is lilting its head in India, Lord
Curzon is. He divided Bengal in such a way that a
change which would have been accepted if carried out
with ordinary consideration has given rise to a resentful
hatred ; some educational reforms he made were be-
lieved to be designed to destroy Indian education ; pri-
vate circulars, anti-Hindu in their purport, were issued
by him, which of course came to light ; he pu blicly
insulted the people over whom he ruled. When he had
to resign- it was not merely a sigh of relief but an
-exelamation of delight which rose up in India. The -mad
Eblkar, 1 to whom Lord Curzon had been specially' ob-
j actionable, hit the mood of practically the whole of
India when, after declining to meet the Viceroy for some
time, he sent a telegram to the boat in which he was to
leave, saying that as they were now companions in dis-
grace perhaps they might console each other. India
guffawed when it heard the story. India had been
brought to the point of rebellion. The Chiefs of the
Native States were offended, the people had been in- :
suited. Every ranting Extremist could gather a follow- '

1 This was the Holkar of whom many stories are told. One is that
once when Lord Curzon was anxious that Holkar should receive him,
he sent a message through the Resident to that effect. Holkar replied ;
"Tell Lord Curzon that I am indifferent” Anxious that the feeling
he expressed, should be conveyed accurately to the Viceroy, he had a
further interview with the Resident and explained himself further in
this way ; If a beggar goes to see a hippopotamus, the hippopotamus
wags his tail. He is indifferent. If Lord Curzon goes to see him., he
wags his tail. He is indifferent I am like the hippopotamus. Ex-
plain that to Lord Curzon.” If the story is an invention, it belongs to
that class of fiction which illustrates truth.

150 GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

mg, the boycott was inaugurated and the manufacture
of bombs was begun.

The spirit of the moment strengthened the personal
shortcomings of the Viceroy. It was the time when
Imperialism appeared to be carrying everything before
it. Sir Charles Eliot, k.c.m.g-., writing in The West-
minster Gazette, 1 said : “ I knew India first in 1884, and
there can, I think, be no doubt that since that time the
European official class has become more isolated. . .
Nor has the recent Imperialist movement tended to
lessen this isolation but rather to increase it. The Im-
perialist thinks of ‘ our dependencies, 5 of the white man’s
burden and the glories of the island race. He puts him-
self and his countrymen in the place of an Imperial
monarch, and in imagination shares the crown. But
that is exactly the type of sentiment that is not wanted
in India.” The offensiveness of the official had reached
its climax. 2

Since then a slight reaction has set in. Some of the
younger men who have breathed the purer atmosphere
which has been enveloping Great Britain since the end
of the South African War, are following wiser and more
sympathetic lines of policy. The administration of such
men has been accepted by the people as an indication
of a new spirit, and the negative qualities of Lord Minto
have given the country rest and helped to change the
spirit of British administration. Moreover, it must not
be forgotten that in the very worst days of Lord Curzon’s
government there were men who stuck to the better
traditions of our rule. I have seen some of these men ;
I have heard others who have gone mourned over, and
1 have learned that to talk of the British official as
though he were all of the same stamp is just as erroneous

1 Quoted in The Indian Review for February, 1908.

* Some confusion. in testimony exists regarding the Curzon regime,
hut the explanation is simple, For the first year or two Lord Curzon
behaved acceptably, and indeed did some things which won for him
the affection of the people. At that time he was very popular. Then
he changed, and the favours he had gained passed like a dream, and
ill-will took their place.

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 151

as to talk of India as though, it were the home of one
people.

With the warning that any generalisation about offi-
cials must always be subject to important exceptions
one may, however, indicate certain general aspects of
our government in its relations to the people. To begin
with, there is a gulf fixed between the two. This is not
altogether our fault, but it is much more our fault than
we admit. A distinguished lawyer of Lucknow, a gentle-
man educated in England and married to the daughter
of an Indian occupying one of the most important offices
in the Government, found himself at Mussoorie last
year. He desired to subscribe to the public library
there, and finding nothing in the rules to debar him, he
applied for membership. In a few days he was informed
that his application had not been entertained, the reason
being that he was not a European. In Lucknow there
is a Civil and Military Club occupying one of the resi-
dences of the vanished kings of Oudh. The rent it pays
to the Government for the building is nominal, in fact,
it is a State-subsidised institution. But it is as hard for
an Indian to set foot in this club as it is for a camel to
pass through the eye of a needle. It is controlled by a
clique of military officers from the neighbouring canton-
ment. Decency has forbidden them from excluding
some of the living representatives of the ruling families
of Oudh, and one night we were entertained by an amus-
ing description of how the military black-ballers were
hoodwinked by another Indian candidate for member-
ship. This practice of exclusion is the rule in the towns
in British India, from Bombay to Calcutta and from
the Himalayas to Ceylon. Mention of the Yacht Club t
in Bombay to an Indian is almost an insult, but I refer
to the Lucknow ease, because if the Government had
had any insight into the little insults that rankle, it
would long ago have ceased at any rate to subsidise
this private club, and would have made it pay a
proper rent for the premises it occupies — or open its
doors.

152

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

The exclusiveness of clubs is only- indicative of a much
wider /.exclusiveness. We were entertained to dinner
one" evening by a member of a leading Mohammedan
family in India , 1 and the conversation turned for a time>
upon the behaviour of the British Resident; and the
/cantonment military people. The final remark of the
lady of the household, who had travelled in England,
and had been for years out of purdah, was : “ I did my
best to be friendly -with them, but they seemed to resent
it, I think the ladies of the military you send here must
come from very low classes. They are so rude. I met
real ladies in England, not sham ones . 55 One of the
greatest Oriental scholars living, a man who has had the
degree of LLJX conferred upon him by one of our own
universities, said to me : “ Relations are getting worse.

No Englishman except calls upon me like a son.

Our rulers are making hypocrites of us , 55 We were enter-
tained by Mohammedans and by Hindus of many grades
in the social and religious scale, and we have talked on
this subject with all sorts of people from Maharajahs to
Christian' outcasts, but we did not meet a dozen Indians
who said that the social relations of Indians and Euro-
peans were satisfactory. On the other hand, we found
that the educated and self-respecting Indian was ceasing
to call on Europeans and was cutting off all connections,
except purely business ones, with them . 2 Even in

1 Obviously it is not always possible to give particulars which will
enable tbe sources of my information to be identified.

2 1 have not used the many well-authenticated tales of provocation,
rudeness, and injustice which I heard. They would fill a volume all
by themselves. I must relate two cases, however. A highly placed
official once met a funeral. Instead of stopping his carriage he
literally lashed his way through the mourners. A mourner sprang at
the official's horse. A scuffle ensued, the native was brought before a
magistrate and sent to jail. Another case — from which I received
much entertainment owing to the chaffing which one of my hosts, who
was concerned in it, received about it— happened in Benares a day or
two before I arrived there. My friend was in a motor which dared to
pass another motor in which a major (or captain) sat. The major laid
information that my friend was* driving at an excessive speed. The
.evidence showed : that the charge was ridiculous, and the accuser

■ But the English t magistrate fined my vlndihW

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 153

educational work co-operation is grudgingly recognised.
St. Andrew’s College in Delhi has an Indian Principal
and a European staff working under him ; but the most
worthy of that staff, the Rev. C. F. Andrews, Fellow of
Pembroke College, Cambridge, was struck off a list of
nominees for Fellowships of the Punjab University by
the Lieutenant-Governor’s own hand, and a man of no
educational attainments put in his place, for no other
reason than that Mr. Andrews has the confidence of In-
dians. The list of these personal affronts is exceedingly
long.

^ The Pax Britanniea has produced insolence amongst
the governors. They resent the idea of equality, and
the more they resent it the more does it take possession
of the people. Thus estrangement widens, and shows
itself in offensiveness of manner, and, in rarer instances,
in personal violence. It is of some interest to note that
the first mention of the bomb as a way of redressing
Indian grievances was when the Calcutta daily ver-
nacular paper, the Sandhya , spoke of it for personal
defence.

The relationship is made all the worse by the unfor-
tunate position of the Eurasian. An outcast from Eng-
lish society and intercourse himself, he vents his un-
happiness on the pure Indian, whom he despises most
heartily. Railway incivilities, which are the most
prolific cause of resentment on the part of Indians, are
generally offered by Eurasian officials.

, Of all this the Government official is only partly con-
scious. He does not grasp liis own position, partly
because no one ever tells him in unmistakable language
what it is. A host of ours was one morning telling us of
the rudeness of the collector of his locality in continua-
tion of what we had been hearing from an ex-official on
the previous evening. Whilst we were still talking on

friend irrespective of the evidence, and on the sole ground apparently
that military prestige has to be maintained at all hazards. This
magistrate would have been much benefited if he had heard the
remarks 1 did.

154

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

the subject, the collector himself appeared and joined
in the conversation. He pooh-poohed in the loftiest
manner possible any suggestion that there was a social
gulf fixed, or that officials had not the confidence of the
people of the district. Turning to our host he said :
“ Take myself. Am I not popular?” There was a
moment of intense amusement for us, during which our
host seemed to be ransacking his stores of polite lan-
guage for a suitable reply. At length he stammered :
“ Well, there is no hostility between us.” The collector,
far too absorbed in himself to see the point of the reply,
turned round a beaming face to me and said : “I told
you so. Of course I am popular.” And the worst of it
was he really believed it.

I found the readiest gateway to the more unfortunate
states of official feeling by studying the mental attitude
which looks everlastingly upon prestige. One hears of
prestige in official India until one is thoroughly sick of
the word — good as it is in itself. If the official would
only sit down for half an hour and, leaving his preeon-
ceived notions on one side, try to climb out of the deep
mental rut into which he has sunk owing to the frequent
use of meaningless words, he might then understand
/something about prestige. His idea of prestige is that
he must be allowed to do what he likes ; that he must
/show the strong hand in government, and restrain the
' strong nerve and the kind heart as being weakening ;
that he must stand no nonsense. He may be known to
drink numerous whisky pegs in his club and his general :
/character may be shady. He may be known to be biased
in his judgments and to hold the “ native ” in contempt.
/But he does not consider that these things, the subject
of endless gossip and comment outside, have any influ-
'.ce on his prestige. In Simla, his Holy Place of Govern-
:ent, he may allow his wife and daughter to play in
imas that are as meaningful to the Indian mind as a
French farce is to the English mind ; he or his wife
~y spend the evenings in a perpetual whirl of dances
circumstances which make an unsophisticated —

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 155

or, perhaps, sophisticated — Indian stare in amazement i 1
he may be involved in personal and domestic affairs
which, can be described only by a vixenish female novel-
ist^who has a spite against her sex. But apparently it
never enters into his head that all these things under-
mine his influence and damage his prestige. I wish those
officials v r ho are subject to this censure could have heard
Indians speak of their conduct and so been put in a
position to estimate the effect on prestige of Simla fes-
tivities, gymkhanas, personal habits, conduct on the
bench, and similar displays of the ruling will become
imperious.

I have been with officers whose arrival in a village
was the signal of demonstrations of delight, and whose
coming to a house was passed round by overjoyed ser-
vants, from sweepers to cooks, who all contrived to pay
personal respects. These are the mainstays of our rule
in India. When you discuss prestige with them they
get angry, because they never think of it and do not
pursue it. They know that prestige is the free gift of the
gods for good conduct— and they also know the value
of their fellow civilians, in whose mouths and thoughts
prestige is as frequent as “ backsheesh ” is in the mouths
of beggars.

The greatest of all the delusions under which our
officials live is that w T hilst they are distrusted by the pro-
fessional and educated classes, they are regarded by the
uneducated villagers as their friends and protectors.
That the educated Indian oppresses the uneducated is
too often true, and that the British official has over and
over again stepped in and protected the sheep in process
of being shorn, cannot be denied ; that in legal disputes
the litigants often prefer a British to an Indian magis-
trate, is also beyond dispute ; that the villager salaams
and tells the sahib that his presence is as the sun and his

1 A well-known Indian potentate was recently taken to a dance at
Simla. After looking on for some time he got tired, and informed liis
host that the girls looked very well but that they might now be
dismissed-!

necti'on

irence hz
y one of
^presents
lich he t
some to
the moc
erly a I:
nutshell,
i all our
ne this
it way is
he follow
whose c
■emoved
le broke
ined reg;
Heir hea«
ge and 1;
Elector s

I he 11
>wers
.ndam
ite ce:
g inei
raetei
a nei
t in h
ling a
that
ame i

migrati*i|j
inees £Cl|
To qwp
seek tli* |
pious, 1')«r{ i
deplore J
it. It i*|

the decrees of Providence,!

s a fact.

It a short. distance in endear

1 the villager. The Collect
Jr sahib, a foreigner, an on
fidoubtedly, one to be use

InrOf in fli a r ? axr nl f/rm

mg the (

or sahib
tsider, o
d when

iWa Kid

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 157

lor. ' He arrived, told the people they were wrong, and;
went away., The people were content.

In so far as the official is conscious of the gulf between
him and the people, lie excuses it, and by fax and away
the most , valid /excuse he offers is that Ms 'work has; .so'
changed that he finds it more and more difficult to keep
in touch with his district. The reports he has to supply
are on the increase ; his clerical work absorbs all Ms
time. If he spends his morning, as his predecessors used
to do, in listening to callers, he has to pay the penalty
by sitting far into the night to finish other work. Then
at the end of five years he is perhaps moved, and he has
to go over the whole process of gaining confidence afresh.

I have seen the truth of this with my own eyes. The
work of the collector is keeping him apart from his
people. We are trying to combine the spirit of the king
with the genius of the clerk.

Other excuses are not so valid. “ How can we mix
with' -them/ socially when they will not introduce ■ us ; to
their wives,. -or dine;'" with us, or observe our habits ? 99 :
But many will show their wives, many will dine at
European tables, many are quite British in their habits.
And yet between these and the British there is little
social intercourse-— in some places none at all. Behind
all these excuses is the assumption that the Indian must
become Anglicised before he can be accepted by the -
ruling caste. The assumption only brings out into strong
relief the fatal weakness of the ruling caste itself.. It is ■
deficient in sympathy and imagination ; it cannot
transplant itself. The Indian cannot become English, $
and in these latter days is beginning to decline to try to |
become English ; and our representatives quietly wait ?
for the impossible as a preliminary to their fulfilling
what is obviously the first duty of a governing authority
such as ours, viz. to get into intimate contact with the
subject people. If we cannot tolerate Indian ways in
drawing-rooms and railway trains, obviously we can do
no permanent good in India and should leave the place
altogether,

158 GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

V'Tt must be admitted that many of the Indian mag-
nates encourage our officials in this attitude. They curry
favours at the hand of Governors and Lieutenant-Gover-
nors, and some of the most worthless sycophants in India
are to be found amongst the Indian aristocracy who have
seats on the Councils and hang round Viceregal Lodges
and Government Houses.

Here I must refer to the growing habit of fleeing to
the hills. The Indian official is particularly sensitive to
any criticism of this habit, and to tell him that he ought
to stay in the plains is undoubtedly an unpleasant task.
Rut the annual migration to the hills and the prolonged
stay there every year is becoming a very serious matter.
It breeds extravagance both in private and in public
expenditure ; the gaieties which have grown up in con-
nection with it are having a bad effect upon the adminis-
tration. It is just as though the British Cabinet and the
Chiefs of Departments went every winter to Monte Carlo
to escape the fogs of London, and what is said in its
defence — good health, better work and so on — is pre-
cisely what would be said in defence of an exodus to
Monte Carlo were we to allow it to begin. The Judges of
the High Court do not go ; the District and Sessions
Judges do not go ; business houses do not remove their
staffs. Capital, one of the most solid Anglo-Indian
papers, wrote last summer that those who say that going
to the hills is necessary “ do so simply from selfish
motives ” ; and “ we cannot shut our eyes to the fact
that work in the plains is performed as efficiently as in
the hills.” The migration costs the Imperial Govern-
ment nearly 900,000 rupees, or £60,000; the Madras
migration costs about £3000, that of the United Prov-
inces £6750, and these charges are on the increase.

To quarrel with this attempt of the Governments to
seek the comfort of coolness may appear to be ungra-
cious, but it is necessary. Some very excellent officers
deplore it, and at least one Governor has frowned upon
it. It results in widening the gulf between people and
administrators, and, psychologically as well as geogra-

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 159

' phically, it is one of the strongest influences in keeping
the bureaucracy a thing in India apart, 1
.. None of the contrasts with which India abounds is
more striking than the amount of social intercourse
between the two races' in British India and in Native
States, The rule in these States is that there is no differ-
ence between European and Indian, and it seems to be
wonderfully well carried out. 2 Our officials themselves
volunteer the information that when they go to British
India they feel the difference. Although there was
deterioration even here under the Curzon regime, it was
unable to penetrate very deeply. The chief reason is
very obvious. The State is a native one. Its relation
with us is theoretically that of an ally, and in practice
its dependence has never reached that point when our
representatives could openly treat the rulers and their
people as subject. Our natural arrogance has always
' been kept in check. . We have also had to send as agents
to these States men of some capacity in handling other,
men, that means, men of some imagination, personality,
and natural, sympathy. In this respect, we have not
been the playthings, of the accident of competitive ex-
amination. The political agent is selected, lie does not
come out on the top in a contest between crammed men.
When the appointment is honestly made — and that
seems to have been generally the case, though there are
^■■unfortunate exceptions— a man of experience is chosen.
The independence of the State and the capacity of the
agent have been the two main factors in keeping down

1 The absurdity of the whole thing was borne in upon me by an

amusing incident which happened when 1 was in Simla. I was dining
out one evening, and whilst the company was gathering I was being
told by an important official that Simla*’ made the administration so
healthy that they got through work so easily and did it so well that
the coat of the migration was more than made up. Whilst he 'was
proceeding there entered another important official, an Indian. He
was shivering and sneezing and altogether miserable. His greeting was :
“This Simla will kill me, I have hardly done a good day’s work
since I came here.’ 5 * ' V

2 We noticed one marked exception. In this particular State an
English schoolmistress was boycotted by the English community
because she was specially friendly with the Indian people. Some of
the actions of the ruler of the State had annoyed the Government,

160

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

that offensive exclusiveness which is like a paralysis in
the life of British India, and have proved conclusively
that the repulsion is not natural to race and not the
necessary sequel of profound differences in social life,
but is merely the outcome of certain defects in the
British character %vhen it becomes an absolute sovereign
over other people.

There is, however, one consistent view of a rational
kind which is used to justify our attitude and which
must be considered. Our service in India believes in
efficiency rather than popular control, and defends itself
accordingly. It does better than the people themselves
could do. That is a matter of evidence. It ought to be
true, seeing that we have destroyed nearly every vestige
of self-government, from village panehayats upwards,
within the area of our rule, and are only now beginning
to build where we previously demolished. Every year,
however, with such cases as Baroda, Gwalior, and My-
sore before us, it becomes less true. Our efficiency in-
deed has not amounted to a great deal, a r i I write this
down all the more boldly because I find the following
comment in an editoral of The Pioneer (November 6,
1909) : “ What, after all, is the state of a British
Indian district that we should concern ourselves with
forcing the condition of differently administered terri-
tories [it is referring to Native States] up to the same
level ? Are the people of Howrah or Cawnpore in any
way really better off or happier than those of Kandesh or
Balagat ?” When The Pioneer says that, what more
need be said !

But I dispute the principle itself. Efficiency is not
better than self-government. In reality the two cannot
be opposed as alternatives, because both together are
the ideal. In Lord Curzon’s time efficiency was carried
tq stupid lengths. Concentration became the rule of the
day ; the provinces were made to feel their subordina-
tion ; an unimaginative mechanism was being substi-
tuted for a contact with public opinion as the deter-
mining factor in government. The pendulum is now
swinging the other way, and the idea of efficiency as the

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 1G1

sole test of government Is being abandoned for tlie time
being. ' Here, I think, the root of much evil receives its
nourishment. The u superiority. 55 of the personal man-
ners of the official, his autocratic ways of doing things,
Ms idea that he should do for India what he thinks is
best for India, arise from the assumption that efficiency
Is what India wants and needs. If men were machines
that would be all right, and the mechanical, excellences
of our Government would settle all disputes about our
rule. But men have pride, will, self-respect ; and con-
sequently a Government inspired by the idea of effi-
ciency will never be acceptable and its officials never be
gracious. The annual Reports issued by the Govern-
ment of Baroda may^not be accurate, those of Gwalior
may not be satisfactory, those of Mysore may not be
reliable; but these three Governments are now doing
more for the mind of India, and are helping India more
to fulfil itself and; to be really efficient, than the British
administration Itself.

Examples of how the autocratic will of officials seeking
the abstraction called efficiency makes trouble are to
l>e found' in nearly every district, but the administration
of the Forestry. Laws will serve my purpose. . No one can
doubt the good intentions of the Government in pre-
serving what remains of the anc^i forests and re-
■ planting areas that had been laid waste and every one
knows that in order to do this some limitation had to be .
imposed upon the grazing and woodland rights and
privileges of the people. But the necessary reforms
came in conflict with an economic system built up on
freedom to destroy, and a sudden change was bound to
be disastrous. Thus we find that the well-intentioned
administrators of the Forestry Laws imposed cruel hard-
ships on grazing villages and upon others depending
upon a free use of forestry products. Absurd punish- *
inents were Imposed for straying cattle and goats, prose-
cutions multiplied, and civil crime of the same character
as poaching was manufactured. A little tact, a little,
skill in handling people, a little sympathy with peasants ,
who were, after all, only following very ancient custom,

162 GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

would have made these necessary regulations far more
palatable, and would by that much have saved the
Government from opposition and harsh criticism.

The remedy is easily seen even if its application is not
easy. Far more care must be exercised in promotions.
Men are now promoted instead of censured, and decora-
tions are given instead of punishments. The best men
in the Service look on and are sad. Good work is not
rewarded. I am aware that in a Service such as that of
India promotion must be mechanical to a considerable
extent, but it need not be nearly so mechanical as it is.
The Viceroy, the Governors and Lieutenant-Governors
might take more concern about their subordinates than
is done at present, and more care might be exercised in
selecting men for those positions of supreme responsi-
bility. ;

Here we touch something essential. I tried my
hardest to find out how the Service got what reputation
it has amongst the people, but I am not sure that I
succeeded. In any event, I could discover no general
rule. A man like the late Mr, Radice, of Lucknow, is
beloved by everybody and mourned by everybody;
men like the late Director of Agriculture for Bengal are
trusted by everybody. And yet, so far as I could make
out, the Service does not benefit by their virtues except
to a minor degree. On the other hand, Sir Lawrence
Jenkins gives a decision which the Anglo-Indian press
receives with howls of execration and the effect is to
re-establish confidence amongst the people in British
justice. Sometimes it appears to be the individual who
acts, sometimes it is the System, and it is the System
which needs reinvigorating. Changed relationships
must be on a large scale or they will remain personal to
the men Who practise them. Young men come out with
liberal British ideas, and in six months they have ac-
quired exclusive Anglo-Indian ones. That in no way
proves the superiority of the latter : it proves the
strength of the System. “ You have to yield, 5 ’
said a deputy -commissi oner to me. “ The atrno-
'S^kebef ithe - pressure, the society in which you live and

163

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

move and have your being here are against you.” Hence,
the System cannot be reinvigorated from beneath. A
strong Viceroy who could impress liberal ideas on the
bureaucracy, Governors and Lieutenant-Governors will-
ing to support him — these alone can change the System.

Moreover, the Indian Service ought not to remain
isolated, as it now is, from every Parliamentary and
democratic influence, and be left to the mercy of the law
of its own bureaucratic being. It claims now that it
alone knows its own work, and that no one unbaked in
the sun of India can profitably criticise it. The claim,
of coui'se, is absurd — so absurd that it almost calls for the
retort that no intelligent tourist at the end of three
months can know less of India than a good half of the
Civil Sendee. I have met men in India who had been
there for a score of years. They knew few Indians, they
had rarely discussed public affairs with them, they could
not answer accurately some of the most elementary
questions about Indian life, their opinions on current
affairs were obviously the parrot repetitions of club talk
or newspaper statements. In fact, they were as separate
from India as l am at home in London, and took their
opinions of India in an even more second-hand way than
I had taken mine before I set foot in Bombay. The
Indian Service would benefit greatly if an interchange
of officers could be arranged with the Home Service.
Fresh minds would then be applied to old problems, and
men trained in Parliamentary ways would contribute
co the settlement of Indian difficulties. Calcutta and
Simla should never be without one or more heads of
departments trained in the ways of Parliamentary ad-
ministration. And a still further change would be very
helpful. To the Secretary of State’s Council in London
should be added two or three Members of Parliament.
These changes would be opposed partly because the
Indian Service has come to regard India as its preserve,
and promotion as its prerogative. But the best men
would welcome such assistance and protection.

There is a widespread feeling that India must be
governed from India and not from London, and that the

164 GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

bureaucracy must be as independent as the administra-
tion of a self-governing colony. Hence, whenever a
question about Indian administration is put in the House
of Commons, the Indian Service considers itself insulted.
For the legislator to criticise the administrator is sacri-
lege. To hear Indian officials explain the mean reasons
why certain old colleagues put questions about India
in the House of Commons, and proceed to claim that no
questions should be put at all because they encourage
sedition and must be put by men who know nothing of
the country, is a liberal education in the very worst
pettiness of a bureaucracy. This is, indeed, the least
lovely side of the Service. This claim to be left free from
outside influence is supported by what is a very erroneous
view of Indian administration. Not only is this ad-
ministration not colonial self-government (to which the
argument of non-interference might apply), it is not an
Oriental despotism (about the absolute autocracy of
which we hear so much), nor is it merely a bureaucracy
of experts. It is an alien bureaucracy. The Anglo-
Indian is an Englishman first and foremost. He has no
intentions of settling in India ; lie is always complaining
of India. He is like a philanthropic slum-dweller at best.
He therefore takes short views— unlike a bureaucrat
native to the soil such as is found in Prussia. India is
something external to its administrators, and it is there-
fore unusually imperative that some general public
opinion other than the Freemasonry of the system of the
bureaucracy should be brought to bear upon them.

> The real fact is, India requires more Parliamentary
influence to play upon it and not less. We are not living
in the time of Akbar or Aurungzebe. The men who are
making opinion in India to-day look up to Parliament,
and are more and more looking down upon collectors.
The Chiefs, of whom one hears so much in this connec-
tion as being disgusted with interference from London
and as being shaken in their allegiance by the subordi-
nation of Viceroys to public opinion at home and by the
tender treatment meted out to sedition-mongers in
accordance with British liberality of opinion, are dying

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA 165

out* One meets, perchance, a gay and gallant Sir Fratap
Singh or conservative Maharana of Udaipur, but they
are beginning to think of their graves, and those who will
succeed them are English in thought, have been trained
in their own colleges in English methods of administra-
tion, or have rubbed shoulders with budding M.P.’s at
some of our own public schools and universities. More-
over, some of the Native States themselves, like Baroda,
Travail core and Mysore, 1 have begun Parliamentary
institutions of a kind. None of the many prophecies
which one can make of India is more likely to be fulfilled
than this : that every tendency in operation in India
at the moment is leading towards Parliamentary govern-
ment, and is influencing Indian thought so that it will
turn more and more to Parliament as its real governing
authority. This -way should be made smooth and wide.
It is no question of taking power or prestige from the
Viceroy, but of bringing the whole System into closer
and more, organic contact with British administration.
As the head of such a System the Viceroy will shine as
much, and be quite as imposing', as I saw him, a plain'
man in a black frock-coat, stepping from: a ■ trainjTat
Gwalior to be received by a bejewelled Maharajah.

The present method of Indian government has nothing
in common with British methods. When the Crown
became responsible for India the intention was to asso-
ciate the Indian with his own Government and to make
Parliament supreme in that Government. But things
have not turned out as was intended. To govern the
people as we thought best and to cease consulting them
as we Went along seemed a much less troublesome
method — especially with an army behind our backs —
than the more democratic way. It was also said to be
more efficient. Thus the bureaucracy took root and
grew thick in bole and branch where it was only meant
to be a shade arid protection for the tender plant of self-

1 There are 100 elected representatives in the Travancore Assembly
and 250 in that of Mysore, but these bodies are unfortunately not
allowed to interfere in the government of the States, and are hardly
even nominal legislatures.

166

GREAT BRITAIN IN INDIA

government. Thus also it has come about that there is
really less popular control and Parliamentary criticism
of the Indian administration now than there was in the
days of the Company, when Parliament kept a vigilant
eye upon the India House. The Service is determined
that this shall last. Liberal policy should challenge this
claim at every point, and increase Parliamentary influ-
ence and the Parliamentary spirit in Indian administra-
tion. I am no believer in sudden changes, because the
pendulum violently lurched forward will speedily swing
back. That is specially true of changes in India which
the System resists. Nor can the changes be brought
about by controlling dispatches from London. They
can be effected only through the policy of Viceroys,
Governors and Lieutenant-Governors who agree that it
is wise to make them.

A Viceroy will go to India one day, I hope, who will
be steeped in Liberal traditions, and whose political
mind will be made up of axioms of government which
have sprung out of Liberal experience. Two grand
characteristics will then mark his rule. He will try no
heroics of administration ; he will not seek to raise a
monument to himself by some “ new departure,” either
in patching up old buildings or in changing the outward
forms of government. This characteristic, though nega-
tive, will not be slightly regarded by any one who knows
India. The second will be a change in the spirit of the
administration. This, again, will not of necessity be
marked by changes in legislation, though some must be
made. The most that will happen will be that the Sys-
tem will feel that a new hand is driving it, just as a horse
knows the kind of rider v r ho is on its back. The System
has responded to the recent reforms ; the System has
great capacity to respond to other and even greater
reforms — the reforms that a truly great Viceroy would
make in its spirit, its political assumptions, its points of
view. Finally, the India Office is becoming too afraid
to do good, and perhaps the greatest of all the services
M;-^;;^ii3 : : ; Me£dv^iepi|^ of whom I dream, is that he will
Office to take more responsibility.

“ What,” I asked nearly everybody I met whose opinion
was of importance, “ is your conception of the end which
is being worked out by our Indian administration ? ”
“ A free and independent India,” replied Arabindo
Ghose. “ Self-government within the British Empire,”
said Mr. Gokliale. “ A measure of self-government the
exact amount of which I cannot quite see,” answered an
old sympathetic official. “ British rule whilst time lasts,”
remarked another official of a different school. I have
tried to estimate the force of the various currents in
Indian life and to ascertain whither they are tending.

We must begin with Lord Morley’s recent reforms, as
they open a new chapter in Indian administration.
Lord Morley has declared that they do not introduce
Parliamentary institutions into India. That is quite
true, but their potentialities and inevitable outcome
must be considered as well as their actual and immediate
provisions. For the evolution of government clearly
shows that the intention of reformers is nothing, and the
internal momentum of reforms is everything. The
Whigs of 18 S 2 never meant the Reform Bill to be the
beginning of democracy, but they could no more stop
the working out of the forces which the Reform Bill
released, or retard the fulfilment of the consequences
which attended it, than they could arrest the flight of
time. Now, the essential part of the recent Reform
measures is the election of representatives (although
this is a privilege given with a niggardly hand, the limi-
tation does not affect the principle), the creation of non-
official majorities and the granting of powers to the
Councils which, if they stop short of legislative authority,
do amount to a consultative authority. On the face of
it this system is unstable. Privileges of election granted

167

168

WHAT IS TO BE THE END?

to Mohammedans cannot be withheld from Hindus,
authorities that have to be consulted must in time be-
come authorities whose advice has to be followed — in
other words, a consultative authority becomes by the
laws of its own being a legislative authority. Lord
Morley has established institutions which are not only
meant to represent public opinion — these institutions
existed in India before — but which are designed to im-
pose responsibilities on public opinion. That is. Lord
Morley has planted seeds the fruit of which is Parlia-
mentary government. It may, however, take the inn
a long time to appear.

Several consequences will inevitably follow from these
reforms. Indian political agitation will become more
real because it will be brought up against the facts. A
Council discussing a Budget will not be able to indulge
in the “ highfalutin.” Moreover, if by good fortune any
one who really represents the cultivators and takes an
interest in the hew industrial developments should be
elected to the Councils, the whole outlook of the Indian
Reform movement will change. There will be as great
a split in the old Liberal movement in India, represented
by the Congress — the movement of the rich and the
educated against the monopoly of political power by the
bureaucracy — as there has been in home politics owing
to the rise of the Labour Party. Or, I may put it in this
way. There is no party politics in India at present, only
the opposition of the official and the non-official, supple-
mented recently by the opposition of the Moslem League
to the Congress. This is all for the bad. But the Reforms
give hope that political conflicts on new lines will arise.
These will establish the conditions under which an ex-
tension of Reform in a Parliamentary direction will not
only be necessary but desirable.

,,The burden of the attack on our finances will relate
to expenditure. Leaving out of account such large ques*
Lions as that ^military expenditure, nobody who has
seen India and the conditions of Indian government will
deny that there is great extravagance. The European

170

WHAT IS TO BE THE END ?

cracy will find new honoui’ and satisfaction in facing with
the success which it certainly can command the more
difficult problems of governing India with the consent
and advice of the people. It is better to be a politician
than a Civil Service clerk, and the Indian civilian will
find that out in due course.

These are some of the questions that lie at our feet,
but w r e must go beyond them and face the more compre-
hensive one which I put to many friends. What is evolv-
ing through all these changes ? Is a united India to
emerge ? Is it to learn afresh the arts it has forgotten ?
Is its glory to be within or without our rule ?

There are indications of the future which any one can
observe to-day. In the first place, it is easy to exag-
gerate the political influence of the separation of races
which exists in India, and even the separation of creeds
and castes. The Indian multitudes are passive. The
mighty waves of conquest which rolled again and again
over India hardly affected the people. They were lolled,
the } 7 were plunged into poverty, they had to alter their
faith. But the changes made by these things were
superficial. Even when the Hindu became Mussulman
he altered little, and to this day the spirit of his ancient
faith haunts him and he still takes part in his old festi-
vals and worships at his old shrines. It has been said
that the spirit of the Vedas influences Hindu and Moham-
medan alike in India. We have left deeper marks than
any of our predecessors, but even to-day, when one
leaves the town behind and goes into the village, one
understands how little has been changed and how much
has been unchanged. We have taught the people peace,
we have made them forget arms ; and if the Govern-
ment allows them to till their fields and worship their
gods, the great mass of the Indian people will go through
life undisturbed by the differences which distinguish
them from their fellows.

The leaders of the old warlike races like the Rajputs
are being transformed by education. “ The old ways
:'p;assihg, ,r sighed the Maharana of Udaipur to me.

WHAT IS TO BE THE END? 171

This Maharana is the custodian of the ancient spirit.
He boasts that his blood has not a taint of the Moslem
in it. In a new wing of his palace filled with the trash of
Tottenham Court Road sits his son and successor, speak-
ing English, eager to discuss English affairs, specially
interested in our Parliamentary government. Even the
Pathan who for long was the stock argument of the
Anglo-Indian against the possibility of Indian national
unity is changing. An escort through the Khyber is
now largely a formal thing ; and besides, this long-
haired, square-faced hero of a hundred raids is turning
his craft to the making of money. He too bows to the
inevitable law of things. Contact and the interlacement
of interests lead not only to peace but to unification.
The Pathan as the stage army of the anti-nationalist
Anglo-Indian is melting away.

Two obstacles still remain, caste and the recent or-
ganisation of Moslem opposition to political Hinduism.
The difficulty of caste is diminishing, however, even if
slowly. A select few have revolted against its tyranny,
and although Indian society as a whole resists in a most
remarkable way every breach of caste rules, punishing
the transgressor with the most dire consequences of boy-
cott and banishment, there is much greater freedom of
intercourse between different castes than there was.
Education is providing a great willingness to change
caste rigidity, if only a beginning on a sufficiently large
scale were made ; and winking at breaches of caste is
becoming more and more common. I have eaten with
Brahmins who, of course, remained in caste, and I have
been entertained by their stories of how they elude the
consequences of their acts. In addition to all this, the
Nationalist movement seems to have the effect of fusing
the castes. Its religious counterparts, like the Arya
Somaj and the revival of Hinduism in Bengal, are
strongly anti-caste ; and if corresponding movements
in Bombay do not run with the same force in the same
direction, we must remember that the Mahratta Brah-
min has still a keen feeling regarding the destruction of

172 ' WHAT IS TO BE THE END ?

his authority not yet a century ago. The battles he
fought are still fresh in his memory, and his forts, mock-
ing him from every hill, keep these recollections green.
His nationalism is therefore more personal and more
bitter than that of any other section. Caste will con-
tinue for many generations embodied in ceremonies and
habits, and it will hamper the development of a com-
plete national unity, by putting difficulties in the way
of the choice of national leaders and by keeping alive
feelings of separateness of a fundamental character.
But it will be in the nation as it has been in the small
section of pioneers. Caste will give trouble, but it will
not be able to make effort abortive.

The relations between the Hindu ■and the Moham-
medan are, at the moment, the greatest obstacles in the
way of unity. The Mohammedan community was never
heartily associated with the Congress. It was repre-
sented there by some of its very best people, like the
Tyabji family, but it is a delusion to believe that Congress
ever roused the imagination of the Mohammedans.
When that is admitted, v r e must not forget that one of
the reasons for this is the general .backwardness of the
community itself. Education is at a low ebb in it ; it
; has not come to the forefront in commerce and industry ;
; it has tilled, and the nimble Hindu intellect has ex-
/plotted: it.,' It has slept in its old ways. Its' leaders de-
cided; against progress. The stream of events ran past;
the community and left it behind, proud but impover-
ished, cherishing fame that had faded. , A few members
rebelled, and some of them associated themselves with
the Nationalist movement, but the great, majority had
■ no .sense of unity except Pan-Islamism. Their life centred
round a shrine, not round a political capital. In India
they were a community only. Nationality was a senti-
ment of which they had not a' particle,./ Some of their
. ' leaders; emphatically repudiated it. 1 But , the > Congress

■ 1 For instance, Mr, Mohamed Sliafi, the 'able leader of the Punjab
•Mohammedans, in his Presidential Address at the meeting of the Pun-
jab Provincial Moslem League, October 22, 1909.

173

WHAT IS TO BE THE END ?

leaders saw that it was essential that they should have
a Mohammedan allegiance, and they tried to get it from

the very beginning. , . . , _

Things went smoothly till the beginnings ot Parlia-
mentary government were seriously discussed. Moham-
medans had previously become aware of the blunder of
their leaders in declaring against a modern education,
and had taken active steps to repair the mistake. They
had founded Aligarh in 1875, and into their minds had
crept the idea of a great educational institution which
would be not merely the seat of Mohammedan learning,
but the centre of Mohammedan public life and a stimulus
to an all-round Mohammedan revival. They have been
fortunate in their Aligarh leaders. Sir Syed Ahmad
Kh an, the founder of the College, was a man of unusual
parts, and in his later years enjoyed without challenge
the headship of the community in India. The present
secretary of the College, Nawab Vikar-ul-Mulk Bahadur,
late Premier of Hyderabad, holds the same position;
and every effort will be made to retain this authority for
the leading Mohammedan official at Aligarh.

The Mohammedan community, though increasing in
numbers, found itself diminishing in influence. It was
not securing its fair share in Government offices ; it was
being left behind in the race for wealth ; it was having
little influence on public opinion. In short, the commu-
nity was a mass without weight. Aligarh arose, and its
task was to turn out every year a body of Mohammedans
educated to take their part in public life. The commu-
nity was fighting for self-preservation. When Lord
Curzon’s educational policy resulted in an increase in the
cost of education, Aligarh protested because, in the first
place, high fees were a serious handicap to the poor
Mohammedan community, and, in the second, the old
“ good ” Mohammedan families had become very poor
in so many instances that the effect of high fees was to
select for education men from the less valued strata of
Mohammedan society. When Mr. Archbold, then the
head of Aligarh, was suspected of favouring Lord Cur-

172

WHAT IS TO BE THE END?

his authority: not yet a century ago, : The' battles lie
fought are still fresh in his memory, and his forts, mock-
ing him from every hill, keep these recollections green.
His nationalism is therefore more personal and more
bitter than that of any other section. ■ Caste will con-
tinue for many generations embodied in ceremonies and
habits, and it will hamper the development of a com-
plete national unity, by putting difficulties in the way
of the choice of national leaders and by keeping alive
feelings of separateness of a fundamental character.
But it will be in the nation as it has been in the small
section of pioneers. Caste will give; trouble, but it will
not be able to make effort abortive.

The relations between the Hindu and -the Moham-
medan are, at the moment, the greatest obstacles in the
way of unity. The Mohammedan community was never
heartily associated with the Congress. It was repre-
sented there by some of its very best people, like the
Tyabji family, but it is a delusion to believe that Congress
ever roused the imagination of the Mohammedans.
When that is admitted, we must not forget that' one of
.the reasons for this is the general backwardness of the
'community itself. Education is at a low ebb in it ; it.
thas not come to the forefront in commerce and industry ;
it has tilled, and the nimble Hindu intellect has ex-
ploited it. ' It has slept in its old ways. Its leaders de-
cided against progress. The stream of events -rarC past
the community and left it behind, proud but impover-
ished, cherishing fame that had faded. A few members
rebelled, and some of them associated themselves with
the Nationalist movement, but the great majority had
no, sense of unity except Pan-Islamism. Their life centred
round a shrine, not round a political capital. In India
they were a community only. Nationality was a senti-
ment of which they 'had not a ■particle. . Some 'of their
: ; te&ders'- emphatically repudiated it . 1 But the Congress

1 For instance, Mr. Moliamed Sliafi, the able leader of the Punjab
Mohammedans, in his Presidential Address at the meeting of the Pun-
jab Provincial Moslem League, October 22, 1909.

173

WHAT IS TO BE THE END?

leaders saw that it was essential that they should have
a Mohammedan allegiance, and they tried to get it from
the very beginning.

Things went smoothly till the beginnings of Parlia-
mentary government were seriously discussed. Moham-
medans had previously become aware of the blunder of
their leaders in declaring against a modem education,
and had taken active steps to repair the mistake. They
had founded Aligarh in 1875, and into their minds had
crept the idea of a great educational institution which
would be not merely the seat of Mohammedan learning,
but the centre of Mohammedan public life and a stimulus
to an all-round Mohammedan revival. They have been
fortunate in their Aligarh leaders. Sir Syed Ahmad
Khan, the founder of the College, was a man of unusual
parts, and in his later years enjoyed without challenge
the headship of the community in India. The present
secretary of the College, Nawab Vikar-ul-Mulk Bahadur,
late Premier of Hyderabad, holds the same position;
and every effort will be made to retain this authority for
the leading Mohammedan official at Aligarh.

174

WHAT IS TO EE THE END?

zon’s policy, began to hint that the number of pupils
should be restricted, and indicated an opposition to funds
which had been started from which fees of students
were being paid, how could the trustees view the situa-
tion except in a hostile spirit ? An expensive and a
limited Aligarh would not fulfil their idea of turning out
a maximum number of men who, having passed certain
examinations, would be in a position to fill the offices in
public and private life which are like bulwarks of defence
to the community to which these men belong.

They vrere quick to see, moreover, that an extended
political liberty might, at the moment, be dangerous for
them unless their share in it was specially protected.
Hence they journeyed to Simla in 1906, and laid then-
claims for special representation before the Viceroy.
They were not in a position to defend themselves in the
open field, they said. If the contest for all the prizes
were to be open, they feared that few, if any, would fall
to their lot, so they asked that some, should be specially
reserved for them.

It is necessary to understand that the Moslem move-
ment is inspired solely by considerations affecting itself. 1
I have read carefully its literature and have discussed
its intentions with some of its leading spirits* The
Mohammedans take their stand upon the right of Mo-
hammedanism to share in the government of India.
They desire judges in the Courts, representatives in the
public service, spokesmen under their own control on
every public authority from District Boards to Univer-
sity Senates and seho<| text-book Committees. They
claim these things, not as a minority requiring protec-
tion, but as a distinct section of Indian society whose
religious differences with the rest express not only an
historical separateness but also a civic one. Numerical

1 This is naively expressed in a sentence winch I take from .the"
address of the President of the Ivnrachee Conference (December 29,
1907) of the All-India Moslem League: “l know of nothing which
has been more productive of concrete results for the benefit" of our-
selves than that great and memorable deputation which, in October,
1906, went to Simla.”

175

WHAT IS TO BE THE END?

proportions, therefore, do not satisfy them. They claim
effective 'power, , -They rank themselves as special allies
with us in the Empire, and to their position in India they
wish added influence in consideration of their importance
as part of Pan-Islamism and their distinction as late'
rulers of the country. 1 They regard India as a federal
government of Hindu and Mohammedan, and desire a
fixed representation for the same reasons as the Ameri-
can and Australian States have insisted upon an equality
of representation (irrespective of population) in the
Senates of these countries.

The community was slow to respond to the efforts of
its leaders. The Indian National Congress was formed
in 1885, and immediately made overtures to the Moham-
medans, Sved Ahmad Khan closely watched the move-

3 “ As a community the Mohammedans contribute largely to the
defence of the Empire* and have also the weight of their Pan-Islamic
relation to enhance the value of their position in India/*— Ali Imam,
in Presidential Address to All-India Moslem League Congress, Am-
ritsar, December SO, 1008. “ We~ are the representatives of our co-

religionists ' in various parts of this Empire.”— Mohammed Ali, b.a.
(Oxon.), at above Conference. A short speech by Mohammed Yakub
puts the whole case so well that I give it practically in full as printed
in the official Report of the Conference, without any correction of the
sentences : “The number of Mohammedans in the Judicial Line of the
Province of Agra is very inadequate and unless prompt and effective
measures are taken to make up the deficiency, the Mohammedans will,
in the course of a few years, nearly disappear from the higher grade of
this most important branch of Government service. In the last quarter
of the year 1908 out of twenty-one sub-Judges there were only four
Mohammedans, out of whom two are on the eye of retirement, and
will, according to the graduation given in the civil list, be succeeded
by Hindus ; and the whole province of Agra, one of the most advanced
Mohammedan Provinces in India, will have only two Mussulman sub-
Judges. In the grade of Munsifs the situation is far from being satis-
factory, and out of a total number of sixty-nine there are only twelve
Mohammedans. Although, we can never admit that our share in the
Government service or. anywhere else should be in proportion to our
numerical strength and in any kind of representation, direct or In-
direct, we justly claim a share ‘equal to our Hindu brethren, owing to
our special importance and the position which we occupied in India a
little more than a hundred years ago. Still even according to the
view taken by Sir Antony [now Lord] MacDonnel], the most unsympa-
thetic .English Governor ’that the Mohammedans of India ever had, out
of every five there ought to be two Mohammedans in the Judicial Line/*

176 WHAT IS TO BE THE END?

ment for three years, then decided against it, and in 1887
called a Mohammedan Educational Conference during
the Christmas week. This Conference decided against
the Congress. A Patriotic Association was formed in
August, 1888, which expressed its opposition to the Con-
gress. In 1893 an Upper Indian Defence Association
of the Mohammedans was formed by Syed Ahmad and
his followers to supplement the work of the Patriotic
Association, which had been too spasmodic. On the
death of Syed Ahmad in 1898 the Upper Indian Defence
Association practically died out. In i.901 a controversy
regarding the script and language to be used in the
courts of the United Provinces brought the Mohamme-
dans into co-operative activity again under the auspices
of Nawab Vikar-ul-Mulk. The Association hung fire
until political reforms appeared over the horizon and the
famous deputation went to Lord Minto on October 1,
1906. The All-India Moslem League was formed on
December 30, 1906. The political successes which have
rewarded the efforts of this League are so fresh in the
public mind that I need not refer to them specifically.
They have been so signal as to give support to a sus-
picion that sinister influences have been at work, that
the Mohammedan leaders were inspired by certain Anglo-
Indian officials, and that these officials pulled . wires
at Simla and in London and of malice aforethought
sowed discord between the Hindu and the Mohammedan
communities by showing the Mohammedans special
favour. 1 The Mohammedans received representation
1 I do not want to encumber tins work with the details of things
■which must pass away rapidly. But to show how unfair tlie .Rules and
Regulations are under which the Reforms were begun I may explain
the conditions of Eastern Bengal, A Hindu must pay 5000 rupees as
revenue, a Mohammedan 750 rupees only, as qualification for a vote
for the Zemindari election. The cess qualification of the former Is
1550 rupees, of the latter IBB rupees. The payment of income tax, the
receipt of a Government pension and the being an Honorary Magis-
trate do not qualify Hindus for voting. They do qualify Mohamme-
dans. Qualifications for election on the Provincial Council show the
same injustice to the Hindu. And this, he it remembered, is not in a
Province where there is a Mohammedan minority, but an overwhelm-
ing Mohammedan majority.

177

WHAT IS TO BE THE END ?

far in excess of their numbers, and they were granted a
franchise far more liberal than that given to the Hindus.

Whether this was done deliberately and diabolically
on the principle of “ Divide and Rule,” or whether it
was a mere blunder showing once again how very little
some of our responsible officials understand India or can
estimate the effect of their actions, the public cannot
say, because the true explanation of Lord Minto’s
speeches, Lord Morley’s counter-speeches and the con-
tradictory dispatches' is still a secret. But be the ex-
planation that it was a plot or a blunder, the first effect
of the arrangement has been to drive apart the two
communities, to undermine the influence of Congress and
the Moderates, and to throw the sane and the constitu-
tional Nationalist camp into something like consterna-
tion. In the Punjab a separate Hindu Congress has been
inaugurated. A writer (said to be Rai Bahadur Lai
Chand, an ex- Judge of the Chief Court) said in The Pun-
jabee ; u The Hindu press is wedded to the Congress cry,
and is equally hesitant to advocate purely Hindu inte-
rests. This self-abnegation in politics which the Hindu
community has adopted to achieve the foundation of an
Indian nation is suicidal.” In Bombay the effect was
not so marked, parti} 1 ' on account of the number of
Mohammedans who are known to be favourable to the
Congress ; and though the gross over-representation of
Mohammedans on the Bombay Councils, particularly
the Bombay section of the Viceroy’s Executive Council,
has irritated the Constitutionalists, they are waiting
patiently in the belief that the injustice and absurdity
of the present arrangement are so palpable that changes
inust take place. In Bengal the blow to Constitutional-
ism has been more staggering. The Constitutionalists
are there beset by an active and enthusiastic left wing
which has ceased to put trust in piecemeal reforms and
which desires that a policy of general boycott should be
adopted. This left wing has the support and sympathy
of many able men, and, if properly led, would influence
far more than it has the Nationalist movement in Ben-

178

WHAT IS TO BE THE END ?

gal. When the Councils Bill was published and the |
favours shown to the Mohammedans declared, the left j
wing’s comment was : “ We told you so. Your Congress !

method has broken down. You do not get what you !

wanted, and the Mohammedans, who can cultivate the |
weaknesses and the prejudices of Government better ;
than you can, have been armed to make abortive what J
little victory you have gained. Have done with the
whole thing.” The Moderates found it difficult to reply
to this attack. But they said: “Wait till the whole -
scheme is published. We must see the Rules and Regu-
lations before passing a final judgment on the scheme.”
When the Rules and Regulations were published they J
made things worse by disclosing in detail the superior .
position of the Mohammedans and by adding to that
certain disqualifications for the Hindus. Meanwhile the
left wing was in great glee. The futility of the Congress
appeared to be written in flaring letters across the whole '
scheme. “ Our sympathisers in Bengal have been in-
creased by thousands,” said a left-wing leader to me the
day after The Gazette containing the Rules was published.

This was the position in the early days. Hindu and
Mohammedan were estranged more than they had been j
for many years, constitutional reform received a stag- (
gering blow, Hindus went about saying that it was no j
good trying further to co-operate with Mohammedans j
for national purposes, and Mohammedans were making |
no secret of their delight and of their determination to
Continue the policy which had yielded them so much. j
In Hindu eyes, the Mohammedans had sold their Indian i
birthright for a smile from the Government. '

And yet I am convinced that this mischief is nothing j
but a passing disturbance. The method of election must '
be altered. It is too absurd to stand the criticism of
common sense. The Mohammedans should be secured I
representation proportionate to their numbers. India
provides those unfortunate conditions which make pro-
portional representation a desirable expedient, and a
';icar^uly::devised' scheme of proportional representation ■

179

WHAT IS TO BE THE END?

will give the Mohammedans that protection to which
they are entitled. Some of the far-seeing members of
the Mohammedan community are already beginning to
feel that they have made a mistake. Several spoke to
me with bitterness about the way that certain of their
leaders had consented to play a game planned for them
by Anglo-Indian officials, whilst in the minds of others
who were still in favour of what had been done a know-
ledge was dawning that there were dangers ahead and
that they might have been better protected if they had
not asked for so much. Few of them could be induced
to defend the privileges given to Mohammedans in
Eastern Bengal and the Punjab where they are actually
in a majority, whilst the Aligarh school was exceedingly
displeased with the mixed electorates and the enfranch-
isement of uneducated Mohammedans. A change in the
direction of fairer play all round is inevitable, and if our
officials were wise they would hasten it.

Further, the time of greatest friction is whilst the
Councils are being elected and people are feeling the un-
fairness of the system. So soon as the Councils start
work, the method of election will slip into the back-
ground and the action of members alone will be con-
sidered. Now, I have been unable to discover any point
in immediately practical affairs in which there is any
difference between Hindu and Mohammedan. Both
will scrutinise Government finance from the same point
of view ; both will complain of the burden of taxa-
tion ; both will oppose certain army charges being
put upon the Indian Exchequer ; both will be divided
in the same way over land legislation ; both will unite
in protesting against the treatment of Indians in the
Transvaal ; both will support an increase in the number
of Indians employed in the Civil Service ; both will vote
for the removal of the Excise duty on cotton, and both,
if they have a chance, will declare for protection for
Indian produets ; both will favour the separation of
judicial and executive functions ; both will urge that
more should be done to educate the young ; both will

180

WHAT IS TO BE THE END ?

oppose official dominance in municipal government;
both will support an Indian volunteer movement, and
both will protest against the insolence of official man-
ners. The Mohammedan may or may not continue to
oppose Swaraj, Home Rule, self-government, on the
literary ground that no one has defined its exact meaning
by classifying what powers of legislation and adminis-
tration belong to Swaraj and what can be exercised by a
subordinate authority ; but that will be found to be of
little practical importance. So also will be the opposi-
tion which the Mohammedan may offer to some of the
more recent Bengal activities like boycott. But they
will not disagree about Swadeshi, the voluntary patron-
age of the products of home industries in preference to
those of foreign countries, including Great Britain.

The Nationalists will be able to make the pace on the
Councils. They can put subjects on the Order Paper and
force divisions, and in the vast majority of instances the
Mohammedans, representing the opinion of educated
sections of their community, cannot oppose. For the
educated Mohammedan comm unity drifts towards the
Congress as it inevitably must, and the representatives
cannot pull against the stream.

I therefore do not believe that the estrangement
which I saw is to be permanent. Everywhere, except in
the Punjab perhaps, it was tending to disappear even
whilst I looked on . 1 Sir Syecl Ahmad Khan did not

1 I do not desire to minimise tlie gravity of tlie distinction, which
separates Mohammedan from Hindu, but, on the other hand, it must
not he exaggerated. Many Mohammedans are still Hindus in spirit.
They have been converted often for other than religions reasons.
There is a couplet one meets with in the Punjab which runs :

Last year I was a weaver, this year 1 am a Sheikh,

Next year, if grain is dear, I shall be a Syed,

The weaver is a low-class Hindu. He is converted to Mohammedanism
to gain social recognition. If he gets good prices for his corn next
year he will be rich and will assume the title given to descendants of
the Prophet. A story is told of an officer who entered a village in the
Delhi district, and found the Mohammedan headman putting a coat of
oil on an idol whilst a Brahmin sat by reciting texts. They explained
that a Mullah had just gone through and had seen the idol. lie was
furious and ordered it to be buried. It had been dug up after his
departure, and was being propitiated , by being rubbed with oil.

WHAT IS TO BE THE END? 181

merely give advice but penetrated into the heart of
things when he said in 1884 : “ Remember the words
Hindu and Mussulman are only meant for religious dis-
tinction. ... In the word ‘ nation 5 I therefore include
both Hindus and Mohammedans.” In . the Native
States the religions a re not a basis for political division.
A Mohammedan is Chief Justice in Gwalior, the premier
of Hyderabad is a Hindu. And when these differences
have disappeared in British India the union which will
follow will be closer than if there had been no initial
soreness. The Mohammedans will have experienced
the uselessness of privileges for which their hearts might
have hankered for long ; the Hindu is always willing to
stand on the Nationalist platform with the Moham-
medan, and will forget quite readily his present soreness
If it be true that the difficulty has been deliberately
created by a few scheming Anglo-Indians, they have
sadly miscalculated the effect of their projects. 1

I ‘see the real difficulties of Nationalism in quite other
directions. The Indian lacks discipline, steady perse-
verance and courage to oppose the ruling race in his
Councils. He is not endowed with the faculty of cohe-
sion. Too many of his titled leaders are worthless char-
acters. Verse uai feelings move him greatly. He splits
up his organisation. He is easily deluded by any one
who tells a tale. His press is the most plausible in the
world, and perhaps the most inaccurate — although re-

1 ce I challenge the Moslem League to produce a single instance
from the records of well-known municipalities in those Provinces in
which Hindus in a body have voted against Mohammedan interests,
one instance in which the Hindus have combined against Moham-
medan members of a Board, one in which European and Mohammedan
members have had to vote against the Hindu majority. . . . Only two
years ago a Mohammedan candidate made a serious effort to enter the
Council at the election held by the first group %f District Boards. He
was successful in securing ten votes against the Hindu candidate, and
the election ended in a tie. Of the "ten who voted in favour of the
Mohammedan candidate, against his Hindu rival, four were Hindus.
On three occasions these Provinces returned a Mohammedan member
to the Imperial Council though the majority of voters consisted of
Hindus/’— Presidential Address to Third United Provinces Conference,
by Ganga Prasad Varma,

182

WHAT IS TO BE THE END ?

cent developments in our own run the Indian vernacular
press very hard. All this makes for weakness in the
Nationalist movement and retards its effective organi-
sation. It may also mean that the new Councils will
never be of any use. This is the result of generations of
ancestors deprived of all responsibility for the ordering
of their own lives. But again, new men are arising, and
this difficulty too will disappear.

'• A still more formidable one is the Anglo-Indian com-
munity. The Service cannot be expected to welcome
the Nationalist spirit, though a section, not at all mean
in numbers and still less mean in ability, readily admits
that Indian Nationalism must grow in influence. But
the Service as a whole is opposed. It has even gone the
length of condemning as seditious the most innocent
phraseology of Nationalism, of asking the judiciary to
ban the singing of “ Bande Mataram,” and to treat as
dangerous political characters those who criticise its
actions. It has sought to widen the scope of sedition
until it should include everything that was not flattery.
Above all, it has resorted to the tyrannical method of
deportation without trial, and without even stating to
the accused what his fault is. In no single instance has
a really dangerous person been deported. The Govern-
ment has had to confess that it made a mistake regarding
Lajpat Rai, and if the Simla gentlemen were to publish
to the world the evidence upon which they sent away
from their homes and put under lock and key the nine
reputable gentlemen who are at present 1 victims of offi-
cial panic, they would reveal a farce which would justify
the dismissal of every one who played a serious part in
it. One man I know was deported because he was trea-
surer of a fund collected for the defence of his nephew,
whose trial ended in his acquittal. To crown all, the
Service feels grossly insulted that the judiciary should
venture to apply ordinary rules of evidence in State
trials and acquit persons accused officially. To hear
officials discuss the merits of some of the recent State
1 They have since been released.

WHAT IS TO BE THE END ? 183

trials is a painful revelation of a condition of mind blind
for the time being to legal justice and individual civil
liberty ; to hear them characterise some Indian move-
ments like the Arya Somaj with a lofty indifference to
strict fact and evidence, is an amazing reminder of how
completely nature robs bureaucracies of the political
instinct. Nationalism will have to contest every foot of
its advance with the Service.

But here, too, there are modifying influences at work.
The pompous Imperialism of the Curzon rule no longer
coarsens the official mind ; the sympathetic elements in
the Service are being strengthened ; Parliamentary
conditions are becoming prevalent ; the High Courts
have resisted official pressure and Anglo-Indian clamour,
and have kept just ; the Government has come very
badly out of trials which it entered upon without careful
investigation, and which it undertook with manufac-
tured evidence. Indian opinion will have freer play to
develop.

A community which is generally forgotten in discus-
sions of the Indian question must not be overlooked here.
The commercial Anglo-Indian community is different
from the Service. It comes in contact with different
sides of Indian life ; it has interests which the Service
knows nothing about ; it has stakes in the country which
it has to defend. Its opinions are difficult to get at.
They are indeed mixed. But the community is con-
scious that it is in a minority. It therefore has not the
desire for self-government that our other colonists have.
It is, indeed, not a colony. Its members do not mean to
live and die in India. They are but trading sojourners
there. If they have happened to be born there they are
looked down upon. “ Indian ” families are not those
who have lived there for generations, but those who have
done some service there, who have sent their children to
be brought up in England, and have returned on their
pensions or their savings to die in one of the Home Coun-
ties. Nationalism means to this commercial community
the supremacy of what is now its subject race. I do not

present ^position^or one

atoiddttf ecoMmcpotey ^ however, vtod>

ment. It has its ext ^\ Vl / En gUshman, and is as bit
“pports newspapers ^^^fJUo-XndiaM can be.
teSv racial in its f e 3 u ^ e ^rdtlie future as belonging

Ontliewboleltberefoieiegaid once, a nd li

to Nationalism. India wxH not anse^ ^ ^

\r e axe wise the day wben 1 » d lia rdly think ot

with expulsion is so rem ^^e^ nS ideration must not

it at all. ^^SSeS^ndthemo^ardenWds

be forgotten. Whilst tne oes will come first ox

will speak of India, poWical ficec^i , g go cll

ing herself. . t po i nt British sovereignty®

A discussion of at ^ P^ iono fIndianNationahsm
India will end owing to the evo ove rlook the prob-

lem of the Native State. q{ tlie eX tent of Natn e

can be seen by a mere st t 680 00 0 square miles ai
rule. Of the area oi Jn« ’ f the population, 62 , 50 °, 000

under Native government , °t tn 1 1 British India.

u£* an ’Senate impression.

* one or o t her o f

WHAT IS TO BE THE END? 185

the Chiefs’ colleges, like the Mayo College at Ajmere,
where he has been instructed in English literature, poli-
tical economy, the principles of government, and similar
subjects. 1 He comes to his Government, as a rule, with
high notions of his responsibility and a determination
to master every detail of his work. Such reports as those
published annually by the State of Gwalior, in which are
included criticisms of every department by the Maha-
rajah himself, are a revelation of the new' 'spirit of the
Indian rulers, whilst the enlightenment of Baroda and
Mysore dims in some respects the lustre of our own rule. 5

1 1 found in an examination paper which the Chiefs 5 sons attending'
the Mayo college had to answer, the following questions among others :
Explain an aeroplane, suffragette. Free Fooder, the Duma, Faarde-
berg, Cabinets, the issues of the Civil War, Factory Acts, Repeal of
the Corn Laws ; and amongst the subjects for an essay was te The old
order changeth, yieldiii£piace to new.”

3 The following extracl^ft^m one or two recent Reports of the
State of Gwalior, written by the^Maharajah, seem to be worth repro-
ducing :

From the Report of 1006-7 . — <£ 1 have to note with regret that the
engineer who has been appointed specially for conducting steam-
ploughing operations has shown himself wanting in zeal, and has
failed to give satisfaction with his work, and the Durbar will now' have
to make other arrangements for working out the scheme. ”

ci I hope the member in charge will advise ways and means in the
ensuing year for bringing up the management to the desired standard
of efficiency .- v

({ The Board will deal with this point in their next year's report,
and satisfy me that this is not the case.”

ce The work done during the year was satisfactory, but the tour
made by the officer in charge of this department was not sufficient.’ 5

s< The Department has been well managed during the year, hut I
think that the superintendent ought to have completed his tour after
his recovery from illness, particularly as there was no specified season
for his touring.”

fi The report is anything but full and satisfactory, and the record of
the year's work is meagre. The work of demarcation has not been
carried out to my satisfaction.”

(6 l therefore desire all Officers to take learning from my present
comment that the care bestowed on accounts in most Departments m
not to my satisfaction/ 5

et Considering the nature of the Accountant-Gen eraPs engagements
during the certain so-called touring days, 1 cannot allow those to be
reckoned as tour.”

" I regret to find that the Steam Laundry is still a languishing con-

186 WHAT IS TO BE THE END ?

% + f rrvm the crowing enlightenment of the rulers,

fessssSSSS-

Native MiaJt Government, Ind none of themselves is
jN&trv e inaiaii A j.n prq either in religious or

SStste?

SS^sffssSSSE

away^Wh^nthat policy was be ^ a [ootin?was^S
nobody and nothing were secure Oui f< ^

sir

poached ehi^win^

S*skr?romus t^y shonid keep their p^e qmet.

pdrtv govemme^^w^b wtdch wekeep^ 11 direct relations
Imaml I tope that the — er in charge will mate every effort to
bring it up to a flourishing state. barren of any profit-

* swffi ; M. ».« p— » -

“v>S£ St: v — «< «• »•!««”«* "

“£Si Soport f i 9 S'to wd»*« «ff«

ShSKS . tad

“In the end 1 am constrained to say that *£5^ 8erved a3 an
£S£t tobetS work! and tl!at the necessary amount of strictly

mibUU . Kaaii AYftrcised.

vAgiJuvm^ ^ per v ision lias n( ^ facts is very regrettable, and I

< s This discrepancy m statements a • * * n its cessation in the

trust it. being 'So'SrwlLtaoi «ii affirmed ntonld

JiSlSr »• i »“> 9 » “* ,0 " ■

writtenvand' reviewed/" ■

187

' WHAT IS TO BE THE END?

and which we administer in the event of' minorities
should undoubtedly be merged in the Native State to
which they belong.

Thus for many a long year British sovereignty will he
necessary for India, for the warring elements in Indian
life need a unifying and controlling power, Britain is
the nurse of India, .Deserted by her guardian, India
would be the prey of disruptive elements within herself
as well as the victim of her own too enthusiastic wor-
shippers, to say nothing of what w^ould happen to her
from incursions from the outside. Coerced by her guar-
dian, she will be an endless irritation and worry. Con-
sulted by her guardian, and given wide liberty to govern
herself in all her internal affairs, she may present many
difficulties and create many fears, but that is the only
way to abiding peace and to the fulfilment of our work
in India.

LAST THOUGHTS

I spent part of my last day in Calcutta in the laboratory-
of Professor J. C. Bose at the Presidency College. I had
heard him once in England deliver a weird lecture on the
poisoning of metals, and I had not forgotten the impres-
sive ending of his discourse when he recalled the ancient
science of his people, and left us with expectations that
the breath of awakening might even then be blowing
across the subtle intelligence of India and be giving birth
to a new epoch of scientific discovery.

In Calcutta, that day, he took up the parable he left
unfinished at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street.
By various strange devices he showed us how plants
indicated that they felt blows inflicted upon them, how
they shrank, how they shuddered, and, most mysterious
of ail, how they died. A flickering beam of light passed
right and left along a scale as the stems and leaves we
were torturing protested against our cruelties, until the
point was reached when no more response came. At
that point a shudder passed through the fibres of the
plant, just as the muscles of a human being contract in
convulsive movement when his last breath passes his
lips. All was then still. The organism W'as beginning to
decay into its elements. Death had come.

Looking upon these experiments I felt as though I
were in the sanctuary of a magician rather than in the
laboratory of a chemist.

The night before I had had an interview with one of
India’s troublesome editors. I sought him in the native
part of the city amongst those torrents of beings which
bewilder and dumfounder the European. I found him
in a place that might have been an Italian palaoBjpffhere
was an ample courtyard, carved screens and baHstrades,
shady stairs. But decay spoke from every stone. As I
entered, the red gleams of the setting sun struck its top

LAST THOUGHTS

I'spent part of my last day in Calcutta m the laboratory- .
of Professor J. C. Bose at the Presidency College. I had
bUri hta once in

iink,nrri.no' of metals* and I had not foi gotten the *mpies
sive ending of his discourse when he recalled the ae'-scnt

Since of his people, and left « be bToW

the breath of awakening might even then be movin a

across the subtle intelligence of India and be giving buth
f a & new epoch of scientific discovei^ •

In Calcutta, that day, he took up the parable he le

2S ^

"“SSI

were torturing protested against our ^ At

point was reached when no moie 1 ^1 • • ■ ‘ ^

th^t noint a shudder passed through the hbies ol i
SnhiSt as the rmjles of a human 1 bemg eon rae * m
convulsive movement when his last breath passes ms
fins All was then still. The organism was beginning to
fcv into its elements. Death had come

Looking upon these experiments 1 J^ 11 the

were in the sanctuary of a magician lathei than in

,a «ht° f h"ad had an interview; with one 0,

JSS ?»J8

was an ample courtyard, carved screens and ^Tstiade.
^ •> stairs But decay spoke from eveiy .*tonc- m ■

enteredlthe red gleams of the setting sun struck rts to,

LAST THOUGHTS 189

and threw its bases into dark shadow, I seemed to have
made tryst there with the night.

“ Here,” said he whom I had come to see, ushering
me into a wide room bare of furniture saving for a table
and a chair or two, “ here we worship. Let us talk of
the things of the spirit ” ; and he embarked upon an
extraordinary account of the worship of Shri Krishna,
of whom his family were devotees. His brother had
ceased to trouble about the things of life, and this one too
longed for the time when he could lay down his pen, hand
the paper over to another, and retire to be alone with his
own being. He often took me by the hand as a father
does a child and patted me as he told me of the tribula-
tions which beset a man’s feet through life, and of the
soitow that waited upon men. As I now write I can
hardly resist the belief that in some way he saw the
shadow that was then hanging over me. There were
tears in his eyes as he spoke of India. Sitting thus at the
long table, darkness fell upon us. Yellowish red patches
appeared on the walls from the lights outside, and
strains of music came in at the windows.

We went out together. It was the evening of a Matri-
puja. The Mother Goddess had been dwelling in the
midst of the people for some days, and this night, with
music and procession, she was to be taken down to the
Ganges. Lights were in every house. Band after band
passed us. The goddess herself riding on her lion carried
aloft and adorned in all kinds of tinsel and colour, under
all kinds of canopies, was to be seen everywhere on her
•way to the sacred river. Men made merry ; the hearts
of women were sad, for the goddess is a welcome guest
with them. The torches flared, the bands of music
shrieked, the crowds shouted and bustled— and over all
shone the Mother, the Giver of Life, in her gaudy paints
and draperies. In India to-day it is al ways * f the Mother, ”
and it was her festival that bade us farewell in Bengal,

When one thinks over all these extraordinary impres-
sions*of things new, weird, and mysterious, he seems to
be drawn below the superficial differences seen at the
silversmiths’ corner in the bazaar of Bombay. These

190 ■ LAST THOUGHTS

differences are but the light split up into fragments,
iridescent, many-coloured, glancing on the surface of
things. Beneath there is unity — a blending of differ
enees in a co-ordinating idea. Even the Mohammedan
who lives away from the borders becomes enchanted
with India and assimilates something of the spirit of , the
Vedas. The great Mosque at A j mere, open as it is to the
foot of Moslem and Hindu alike, symbolises the real mind
of India. So too at Rampal, the ancient capital of :
Eastern Bengal, one sees Hindu images in the verandah -
of the mosque, and in similar places of worship through-
out the country the “ common altar ” is not unusual.
The outcast who lives and dies in the outermost courts
of the temple, and who is banished from the presence of
the twice-born, hankers after admission into the holies
where India dwells, The Mother they alb worship is
India— the India which stretches from the Himalayas
to the southernmost part of Ceylon. That is the India
of their religion, the India within whose borders are the
sacred shrines scattered far apart, north, east, south,
and west, but all sacred to all the people. Every Indian
holds the Himalayas in religious reverence. The crowd
on the banks of the Ganges at Benares represents every
phase and race of Hindu life. “ Hail, O ye Ganges,
Jarana, Godavari, Sarasvati, Narbada, » Sindhu, and
Kavari— come and approach these waters !’ 5 is the
prayer of the Northern Hindu who perhaps will never see
one of those sacred rivers, but to whom the land to which
they belong is a sacred personality. The Buddhist in
Ceylon breathes precisely the same prayer, because he
too grasps the same sense of national unity. And the
modern revivals of religion with their queer blending of
East and West — of rationalism and superstition — have
by their worship of the Mother greatly reinforced the
part which India as the embodiment of the Hindu’s faith
is to play in polities. The land embodies his religion, as
the irnage of his god embodies the cult of his Worship.
Only when the Indian civilisation has passed away, and
when Hinduism has become a religion that has been bat
is no more, will the superficial differences of language and

LAST THOUGHTS 191

creed which the politician places so much reliance upon
to-day be of fundamental and real importance. The life
below is that of a united India — a religious as well as a
geographical unity — and that life will continue to strive t
for political expression. India is a vision of the Hindu ’’
-faithful as heaven is a vision of the Christian saint.

- India is a place of enchantment. It baffles you : it
enthrals you. It is like a lover who plays with your
affections. There is something hidden in its heart which
you will never know. It is maddening in its imperturb-
ability, in its insistency. You feel insignificant before
it, just as a decently minded prize-fighter would feel in-
significant before a saint. The difference which sepa-
rates you from it cannot be bridged. This is charac-
teristic of everything Indian. India centred in the uni-
versal is pantheistic and communist ; the West .centred
in the particular is theistic and individualist. The
difference is, therefore, in the essential nature of things.
Thus, your attempts to understand, thwarted, laughed
at, denied every time, become maddening. India eludes
you to the last.

-f ; -%Mune away full of presentiments such as possess one
to wjjom a glimpse of some great coining event has been
given. , That last day in Calcutta continues to haunt me.
It was a peep behind the veil. As I drove back through
the crowds to my place I saw the pageantry of India, its
gilded past, its patient peasant toiling till the sun goes
down, its newly educated sons, subtle, resentful, proud,
cherishing memories and hopes in their hearts. The
smoke clouds of Bombay, the bustle of Calcutta, the
ruined cities of the Ganges plains, the crowded temples
and ghats of Benares, passed through my mind. Simla
with its vanities both of foice and frivolity, the good men
pf iny o wn people who strive to do righteously, the mis-
taken men who walk in the darkness which will never
liftirom their honest minds, came up too. And it seemed
io me as though the procession of the old, of India her-
self, were to last through the ages, whilst our dominion
„wa^ to pass as the shuttle through the warp, as a light-

102 LAST THOUGHTS 'd

ning flash from cloud to earth. How awe-inspiring this
land and*' ks people are ! how temporary appear our
dwelling-places in it ! even our best deeds, are they of
the stuff that abides ? Our good government — a revo-
lution could bury it in its own dusty ruins. Our material
'gains— -a ; -spiritual revival ebuld shrivel dhenx' ijpgs' thd
sun parches the grass on the plains. Are the pursuits
we have taught India to follow anything but "alluring
shadows 1 Is ■ no w s.lir. we arc idling lier to seek to be
; anything but dus ts and dishes' ? : Is : the industrial India,
I saw 'arising,; begihned and strenuous,' to last and to
^oyephadow 'the 'iiidia one; seesratphe .bathing , ghats of
l* mu i is ■ ir feels la .lie Oriental library at Bnnkipur ?
The 1 hig years' alone can disclose these secrets. The
riddle is troublesome.

But one thing is sure as surety itself. We talk of the
Beiigali with -a sneer v We are amused, at his Babus and
^ Failed B./L’s,” and we are repelled by some of his
'e’aaiseteristics.' We persuade ourselves that the i. only
:.yray ■%' .deal with the' eodlfelkdo. cuff him occas ion al ly ,
, and. that by elbowing 'our.ivMy .tM’pugh we arc impressing
him with our pibs'kw and ho will accept I.'"-' mb, •rdina*
lion. We o.u'i ‘hia ce absurd did inclirm-; > v ween India’s
/.educated .and uneducated eMssesp ami imagine : thp 1 ' tip
' : hfbteetrthe one;' we must offend t he b|her-b-aspthlSS
they were not both of India. If is all a vague dciusic®,
;T'he;ixnpiilsie§:"of 'Indian, life Will go on, They will ,sh<fj|
themselves in Science, in Art, in Literature, in Polities
—in Agitation. We can welcome them, or we can try to
retard them and grudge them every triumph. If we are
wise, we shall do the former. We can then help India
and win her gratitude and her friendship. When she is
rich, as she will be, she will remember the friend of her
poverty. / x.Wbeh;ske'is. honoured for her. own ■ sakepasrshe
will be, spe will remember the patron of her obscurity,
Jlul we cannot keep her back. Her Destiny is fixed
..nl>ove ! our :: vpill, ; an4^hb44 better' reeOghispit'^udtbp#
to me Inevitable.

IV tVAU BRfchNUOX A SO' SOK, LfO. PEWTERS* PLYMOUTH

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Texts

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "The Awakening Of India"

See other formats